


They Might Promise You That The River Ain't Deep

by elistaire



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: Bunny Costume, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-07-22 06:08:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7422991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elistaire/pseuds/elistaire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kronos, wearing a pink bunny costume complete with floppy ears and cotton tail, shows up one day with a message from the future. Methos doesn't like the messenger, doesn't like the message, and certainly doesn't like the method needed to tell him these things.    Things are about to go bad in the future, Methos is the only one who can stop it, and the only way to do it is to kill Duncan MacLeod.</p>
            </blockquote>





	They Might Promise You That The River Ain't Deep

**Author's Note:**

> Previously published, I believe in 2009, at some point. 
> 
> Warnings for the fic found in the end notes.
> 
> Title from the Gorillaz song.

Chapter 1

Methos lounged on the sofa in the living room of MacLeod’s house. He was tired. He was hungry. He had a list of errands to run now that he’d come back to the States. 

What he didn’t have time for was the hallucination of a real life-sized Kronos dressed in a giant pink bunny costume. He even had the white cottony tail. One ear drooped off to the left a little, but the other was quite perky.

Methos wasn’t sure why he was hallucinating the Kronos-bunny. He didn’t often have hallucinations now that he had put a good many years between himself and the various drugs involved in certain cultures and certain periods of time. Immortal healing tended to deal with that sort of thing very well. 

Perhaps he was dreaming. 

But then again, he didn’t often have very lucid dreams. He dreamed like most everyone else did. When he woke up he knew it was a dream, but during the dream it seemed very real. He wouldn’t lay about on MacLeod’s sofa and see a vomit-pink bunny costume snuggled about the figure of his most despised, feared, loathed, admired, and loved Brother from another era. Who was also dead, as far as he knew.

At least he didn’t think so. 

Perhaps he wasn’t dreaming. 

If he wasn’t dreaming, then this was a very bad sign. 

The Kronos-bunny hadn’t spoken at all during the few moments that Methos had to muse on the situation. He had just stood there placidly, complacently examining the space he was in. But now he fixed his gaze on Methos and grinned that evil Kronos grin. 

“Well, Brother,” he said, still with that same menacing tone and the same menacing voice that Methos knew so well. It felt familiar. Like fingernails on a chalkboard. “Nothing to say?”

“Not really, no,” Methos replied. He had already contemplated the dream scenario and the insanity scenario, but it seemed real enough, so he was going with it. “I think I saw this in a movie once. But not exactly this. What’s going on?” He tried to be as matter-of-fact as possible. 

“Trouble.”

“That I could have guessed. Any other details?”

The Kronos-bunny slowly walked about the loft, picking things up, giving them a disgusted look, then putting them down. “I’m here from the future.”

“That makes no sense. You do know you’re dead, right? You died quite a while ago, in fact.”

“Of course I did.” The Kronos-bunny finished going through the things within easy reach. He looked down at himself with an even higher level of disgust. “You could fix this.”

“I could? What? The bunny outfit?”

“What else?”

Methos shook his head. Perhaps it was jet-lag. It had been a long flight. A little dry, too. He’d been dehydrated. They had given him salted crackers. Yet it all seemed so normal, even in the midst of its surrealness. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Maybe you should start from the beginning.” 

“Always the researcher, weren’t you, dear brother?” Kronos-bunny sneered. 

He looked exactly like Kronos at his most fearsome, except the bunny outfit really watered it down. Methos frowned. That seemed somehow logical. Kronos in a bunny suit—an appalling pink bunny suit, all fuzzy and wuzzy and felted—was not at all a scary thing. But a bunny suit? Wouldn’t something else have done as well? But Methos couldn’t think of anything more ridiculous than having Kronos encased in a pillowy mascot-like costume. 

“The story,” Methos demanded. His head was starting to pound, even though his amusement at seeing Kronos so bedecked was hardly abating. 

“Fine. I have come from the future. To you. To ask for help. In the future, the Game has been won, but it has all gone terribly wrong. The One sent me back to you so that we could fix things.” Kronos stopped, then grumbled, “He thinks to fix things. I’m just along for the ride. Personally, I doubt it can be fixed.”

He had Methos’ attention now. “The One? The Game? Who was it?” He swallowed, realizing the portent of the appearance of the Kronos-bunny. “It’s MacLeod, isn’t it?”

“Of course it’s MacLeod!” Kronos-bunny spat. “Who the hell else would it be? Anyone else would have become the One and been fine with it. But MacLeod has to deliberate. He’s got to think about it. Got to fret and worry and consult, and think deeply, and over think everything. I couldn’t think of a *worse* person to win the Prize. Not only does he waste the potential, but what he does do with it, he mismanages.” Kronos-bunny shook his head. His ears bounced, and again Methos was struck by the oddity of it all, if it was real and not a hallucination.

Kronos-bunny held up a pink paw. “Anyway, he wanted your advice, so he sent me back.” Kronos-bunny looked proud and fierce, although not too fierce since he was inside the bunny outfit. “I’m one of the few unmuddled personalities left inside his mushy, cracked up brain.”

Methos took a moment to breathe. He liked breathing, and it seemed that at some point in the future he was going to stop doing it. He wasn’t exactly okay with that, but it had always been a possibility, so he had come to some kind of terms with it. Not that he liked actually hearing about. It rather preferred to keep it as a nondescript future potentiality, rather than a hard known fact. If MacLeod won, then all other Immortals were dead. He kept breathing.

Of course, Kronos-bunny’s announcements also meant some other things as well. Not all of them good.

“He requests that I bring you back to talk with him. He said he’ll explain it all.”

“He?” Methos felt a little foggy-brained.

“MacLeod. His Oneness.” 

“I see.”

“No, I don’t think you do, but you will.” Kronos-bunny’s eyes lit up with anticipation. 

“Okay, fine. Let’s say I go along on this joyride to hell. How does it happen? And what are my chances of getting back here again in one piece?” Methos decided to throw those out there. He was entirely unenthusiastic about the prospect of going anywhere with Kronos, dressed as a giant pink rabbit or not. He was also doubtful about anything good coming of going to see The One. He imagined that The One, even if it was MacLeod, would be hard pressed not to start taking up his sword again for more berserker insanity against any Immortals in the immediate vicinity. Methos liked his head where it was. Going anywhere near The One was a very bad idea.

Kronos held out a fuzzy paw. “Take my hand, Brother. I’ll do the rest.”

“I’m sure you will. Now about that second question of mine.”

“All of life is a danger. Some moments are more dangerous than others.”

“Great.” Methos considered the situation. Giant pink Kronos-bunny? Check. Warnings of future doom? Check. Invitation to get his head loped off? Check. “Yeah, I’m going to have to pass on this. Tell MacLeod he can come here.”

Kronos-bunny didn’t like that answer--he lunged at Methos, tackling him four-square. Methos’s rump took a nasty hit as they went down together, Kronos-bunny on top, crushing him with his weight. “There’s no getting off this ride, Brother. This ride is forever, and you’re in the first car on the high-rise roller-coaster.” Kronos-bunny leered with contempt and delight. Something nasty was about to happen, and he was excited about it.

The world around Methos started to melt. All the colors streaked down, crumpling like heated wax. They puddled on the ground, then ran into a single pool that turned an unappetizing sludge-brown color. Nothing was left of the living room. It had become a blank slate, like a plain white piece of paper. 

The lack of depth perception was startling. Methos blinked, but nothing was in focus. There was nothing to focus on. 

Except for Kronos-bunny, who remained leering and cuddly-pink. His weight on top of Methos was the only thing still making sense as his eyes refused to focus on anything in the blank-slate environment. Kronos-bunny pushed himself off Methos, giving his shoulders a harsh wrench. 

Methos gingerly got to his feet. 

“Come on. He’s waiting for us.” 

“Who?” Methos asked. “Where are we?”

“MacLeod,” Kronos-bunny explained, with obvious contempt. “I thought you were the smart one, Brother. Try to keep up.”

“MacLeod is here?” 

“Here is MacLeod,” Kronos responded unhelpfully. He rolled his eyes and snapped his fingers, although with the soft pink rabbit-mittens, it only made a soft rubbing sound. “I explained this before. I am one of the non-integrated personalities still left in MacLeod’s psyche. He sent me back to retrieve you. He wants to talk with you. So I’ve brought you here, to MacLeod.” Kronos-bunny held out his arms and twirled around once. “This is all MacLeod. He can’t bring you physically into the future. Or he won’t. But we’re inside his head. His mind.”

“But it’s a blank slate,” Methos said before he thought about it. 

“You noticed.” Kronos-bunny sounded demeaning, like he was trying to make a deprecating joke, but there was a glint of fear in there too. Methos wondered what that meant. He filed it away to think on it later. 

Methos changed gears. If he just accepted what he saw and was told as the truth then perhaps he’d have a better time functioning for the time being. He could develop critical analysis of everything when it was required. “So, if this is all MacLeod, where is he? Why do we need to walk to meet up with him?”

Kronos-bunny looked impressed at the question. “Finally, Brother, you’re starting to think again.” He paused in the vast wasteland of whiteness. “I brought you here first to help you understand the problem. The mind is represented here. What you see is not real, it is all a metaphor for a complex psychic function that would otherwise not make sense to you. And I brought you here because out here you won’t be automatically integrated into MacLeod. We’ll meet him at the edges. Go too far and you’ll lose yourself.” Kronos-bunny looked smug. “This is where I stayed, keeping out of sight. To survive.”

“And my future self?” Methos asked. “Why doesn’t he just talk to the me he must have inside his head? If he’s The One, then I’m dead, and he should hold my Quickening.” 

Kronos-bunny frowned. “That’s privileged information. Only provided on a need to know basis.”

“And I don’t need to know?” Methos said wryly. 

“Exactly. Don’t be so eager to learn of your own fate, Brother. It’s not something to take in lightly.”

Methos let that pass. He already knew he had to be dead, otherwise there would be no One. And he already knew that it was MacLeod who had become The One. He wasn’t sure that the details of his own demise would do that much, really, to upset him any further. He was pretty well upset by the whole thing already.

They walked on in the vast brilliant blankness. Somehow Kronos-bunny knew where they were going, although Methos could see no sign posts or markings that would make the travel direction obvious. 

Finally, in the very distance, Methos saw a smudge. Faintly grey, nearly colorless, it at least was something to look at. It resembled a low flying cloud. Smog, perhaps. Nothing else seemed to exist except for it at the end of the horizon, and it felt like an eternity of walking to get there. 

It gave Methos a lot of time to think over everything. He was beginning to decide that what was happening was real. He’d had teachers long ago who had tried to provide lessons into reading the future, and discovering secrets. He’d never been any good at it. Mostly he just ended up with a headache. But every once in a while, he’d had a strange dream where he had glimpsed aspects of the future. When he had been deep into his training with a very talented teacher once, he had had such a powerful future-dream. At the time it made no sense, but he thought of that dream now, with its similar strains to this particular encounter. Pink and grey. He remembered the harsh colors of pink and grey, and the fear of death. He’d not found any portent in it at the time, but it had always stuck with him. As a warning. If so, it had been well off its mark. 

Methos thought about Duncan MacLeod. They were friends now, after years of ups and downs. Even after the debacle that the Horsemen had been they’d somehow managed to patch things up. Methos now had an open invitation to MacLeod’s house. He had actually started to take the man up on the offer. The house had been on the edges of a bad section of town, with MacLeod claiming he was part of some rehabilitation project. It was an example of how MacLeod had not lost his power for hope, and for action to involve himself in the world and try to make it a better place. Methos often warmed his soul by that bright flame that was MacLeod’s enthusiasm and energy, and the love he held for all his friends. 

What could have happened in the between years to have brought MacLeod so low that when he became The One that he would have lost that fervent energy?

Perhaps the deaths of all those you love dear, Methos thought.

In his present, so many were still alive: Joe, Amanda, Connor, and others. Tessa was still gone. And Richie. Methos wasn’t sure MacLeod had overcome that particular wound quite yet.

In the future, they would all be gone. 

But it happened as a consequence of time. Immortals moved through the ages, not like ghosts, but as real people, living their lives. They made friends. They made enemies. 

The smudge grew closer and Methos turned his thoughts to Kronos. Kronos-bunny was striding next to him, eyes on the smoggy horizon. But the real Kronos was dead. His head taken by MacLeod years ago. His Quickening with it. Methos remembered that and touched his sternum. The shared Quickening. 

He inadvertently had a hitch in his step. 

“Figured it out, didn’t you, Brother?” Kronos-bunny said. He didn’t turn his head to look, but just kept walking on. His long ears flopped in rhythm to his step.

“It was the shared Quickening,” Methos replied. “That’s why you were able to come to me. That’s why MacLeod could send you.”

“Yes.”

“What about Silas?”

“He was the integrating sort. You had absorbed his Quickening.”

Methos digested that. “So, that explains why MacLeod chose to contact me. I’m just about the only one he could.”

“Just about.”

“And why now? Why not ten years ago? Or twenty years into the future?”

Kronos-bunny looked grim. “There are reasons, but you won’t learn them from me. On your toes, Brother. We’re almost there.”

They lapsed into silence again as the grim-color of grayness loomed larger in front of them. The brilliant whiteness of the vast landscape was gone. The world was now only soot colored. 

The pinkness of Kronos-bunny’s outfit grew even more ridiculous, until Methos realized that he was actually giving off a kind of phosphorescence. Before he could remark on it, though, a figure appeared in the distance. Shadowy, it was nonetheless familiar. 

Kronos-bunny stopped walking and Methos took another few steps past him, staring. “MacLeod?” he called out. “Is that you, MacLeod?”

The figure emerged from the smoggy atmosphere. It was indeed MacLeod, but he was different somehow, and in a way that Methos found hard to put his finger on. It was the same man, with the same face, and the same hair, the same limbs, and stance. But his eyes were dark and troubled. 

“Methos,” he said, and the name was like a caress. “You’ve come.”

“How could I turn down an invitation that puts Kronos in such a ridiculous costume?” Methos said jauntily, and the words fell into the smoggy air and were lost, sounding disjointed and wrong. He tried again. “I’m your friend, Duncan. I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

“I know.” MacLeod looked all the more troubled and sad. “This moment. This time. I can’t explain it to you. But….but…I wish I could. I need a favor from you.”

“If I can,” Methos said warily. How many other conversations in his life had started with favors only to end in disaster?

“I want you to take my head.”

 

 

 

_Chapter 2_

The words dropped like pebbles into a pond, spreading their ripples over everything. Methos’ gut clenched and his throat constricted. Behind him, Kronos-bunny made a disdainful noise. 

“No. Hell no.”

“Not here,” MacLeod said. “Not now.” He smiled wanly, but it was just a movement of his face, not a true showing of emotion. “You couldn’t hurt me here, anyway, but even if you could, it wouldn’t be good for you. My ceasing to exist would cause this place to stop existing. You would be trapped, and then vanish. And it’d be a paradox. Where would my Quickening go, if you were in here with me?”

Methos felt ill. “Don’t tell me riddles or lies,” he said. “So what’s your plan?”

“Kronos will take you back. To yourself, to your own time. There will come a moment, which I will describe to you, and at that moment, you will take my head. MacLeod’s head. In your time. It will save the world.” He looked enormously sad now, his familiar eyes pleading with Methos to accept and understand. “You will save me.”

Methos swallowed. “No. Never.”

“You don’t understand. I wasn’t meant to be The One. It was all a mistake. I’ve got to undo it. This is the only way I know how.”

“All a mistake?” Methos echoed, horrified. “This is the mistake. MacLeod, you were one of the best of us. Your passion, your energy, your commitment. You learned judgment and mercy, compassion and hope. Just *be* whatever it is that you need to be, and make the world a better one.” He shook his head. “If this is just your guilt over the deaths of your friends, well, we all knew it had to be this way, didn’t we? From the moment we become Immortal, our fates are cast on the winds. Only one of us would ever survive.”

“Perhaps,” MacLeod answered. “But I am The One, now, and I decide what shall be or not be.”

“That’s the MacLeod I remember,” Methos said. “There’s got to be another way.”

“There are things I cannot tell you,” MacLeod said, “but you will have to trust in me that there is no other way, and that I am right in this decision. I must not survive to become The One. And only you can prevent that.”

“I’m not going to take your head,” Methos said defiantly. 

“Told you he had gone soft,” Kronos-bunny said in a low voice from behind him. 

“He doesn’t understand yet, why it is so important, and that he will do it, no matter how he feels about it.”

“I’m right here,” Methos said angrily. He resented their talking over him. “Now, send me back, and deal with this in your own way. I’m not killing you, or MacLeod, or whomever.”

“Show him why,” Kronos-bunny said. “It’s the only way.” He grinned. “I’d be happy to show him for you.”

MacLeod shook his head slowly. “No, it is my burden to bear.” He held out a hand to Methos. “Come with me, and I will show you.”

Methos looked at the outstretched hand for a moment before grasping it. All his instincts were against it, but his curiosity was stronger. He held onto MacLeod’s hand and the world melted away. 

He blinked and they were in a kitchen. 

“This is okay,” he said. “Where are we?”

“I cannot actually take you to the outside world,” MacLeod said. “Because your consciousness exists only within my mind. A visitor, if you will. So I’ve taken you to a representation of the world as it exists outside.”

“So, we’re in a kitchen?”

“Wait a moment.”

Then Tessa came through the door, followed closely by Richie and Joe. “Duncan,” they all said. “You’re home early!”

Methos frowned. “You brought them back to life?”

The three of them didn’t seem to see Methos, and after their initial greeting, they ignored MacLeod. They bustled about the kitchen, each of them acting independently, but their conversation made no sense. Tessa called out, “I’m going to do the laundry! I love you, Duncan!” Richie said, “Yeah, no problem, man. I like motorcycles!” Joe sat on a chair with a guitar and strummed Swanee River. “This is my favorite,” he said, and strummed it again. 

“Yes. In a way. I created their outer shells, but they have nothing inside them but my memories of them.”

“That’s pretty horrible, but it isn’t worth my killing you,” Methos said. 

“I’ve done that with everyone. Everyone I’ve ever known or loved. Liked. Or even hated. I made them all exist again.”

“Sounds like a population problem,” Methos commented. “But just undo it. They don’t exist anymore, they’re just constructs.”

“I…can’t. I have something else to show you.” The world melted again, and then they were standing in a park. A large, transparent bubble was in the middle of a clearing. MacLeod was in the middle of it, floating. 

“What is that?” Methos asked. He tried to grasp everything about it, but it was enormous. 

“Watch.”

Methos noticed the other people in the park now. Lots of people, in uniforms. With guns. They had tanks aimed at the bubble. He watched for a while as they assailed it with rockets and other exploding things. Lasers didn’t make a dent. MacLeod was safe within the bubble. 

“So, they’re all trying to kill you?”

“I had a mental schism,” MacLeod explained. “Sometime after I won the Game, the enormity of the world, of the universe, it became too grand for me. I could feel the ants in the dirt, the worms, microbes multiplying, and the birds beating their wings against the air. I felt everything. I lost who I was, and I despaired, because everything around me was dying.”

Methos looked hard at the man standing next to him. “But we’re talking right now. So you’re better. You can stop.”

“You’re only talking to a small part of me. Most of what I was is…damaged. It acts only on instinct. Watch.”

Methos looked again at the bubble. A zone of brightness was building around it and then it let loose in all directions from the bubble, like the energy from an explosion. Everything was destroyed, including all the people that had been in the park. “Why?” he asked. “They couldn’t hurt you!”

“Because they were near. Because I could make them again.”

The people reappeared. Other animals reappeared. Birds, squirrels, a cat, insects. Methos saw them reappeared with small zaps of energy. Of course, they didn’t exactly reappear the way they had been before. Like the replicas in the kitchen, these people came back as shells of themselves. 

“I’ve trapped them inside,” MacLeod said. “To save them from trying to hurt me again, and so, to save me from destroying them again. But they’re alive.”

“That’s inhumane.” Methos felt like vomiting. “Just stop. Don’t do this anymore.”

“That’s not all,” MacLeod continued relentlessly, his voice monotone. “The energy of The One—the energy of all Immortals—was always derived from the energy of the Earth itself. And the Sun. From the cosmos. As Immortals we reach down into the core, to the power there, and we tap into it. As The One, I can take the power from all around. What I’m doing here, every time I do it, I take away that energy. I am destroying the Earth. At this point, there’s less than a year before I take so much that the world will end.” He paused. 

“MacLeod,” Methos could barely speak. “You have the power to stop. Obviously you don’t want to do this, so just stop.” He grasped MacLeod’s hand and found that it was ice cold, and clammy and stiff like a dead man’s hand.

“It’s already done. What I’m showing you is the past. There is no Earth. I float alone in the galaxy, absorbing nothing but energy, and existing alone.” MacLeod turned his melancholy face to Methos. “I couldn’t stop at the time. It was all consuming, and my mind was shattered. It’s taken me untold millennia to reach this mental state now, to have this sliver of consciousness, to put some small part of myself back together again and to reach out to you. I do not know how long I can hold myself together. I need for you to agree, and to do as I have asked.”

“No,” Methos said, although he didn’t know if he said no to killing MacLeod, or no to the whole damned thing. Or no to listening to anything more. He did know he was overwhelmed with the situation, with the devastation, with the entire desperate nature of it all. His head was pounding, and he held up a hand to try and steady himself, but there was only MacLeod and as soon as he touched him, everything exploded into darkness.

 

 

 

 

_Chapter 3_

When he woke again, he was back in the smog. Kronos-bunny was taking care of him. 

“Lightweight,” Kronos-bunny said. “MacLeod said you fainted. Did a little mayhem get under your skin?” He handed over a cup of tea that appeared out of nowhere. 

Methos sipped at the tea gratefully and after a moment his parched throat loosened and he could speak. The tea, he noticed, didn’t taste of anything, as if in this colorless place, all things were flavorless too. “A little mayhem? Kronos, that was the apocalypse. The end of the world. Of life. Of everything. It was a bit much to take in all at once.”

“You shouldn’t have stopped me from killing him, you know,” Kronos-bunny said, wistfully. “As evil as you think me, I would never have destroyed the world.”

“I know. I didn’t think MacLeod had it in him.”

Kronos-bunny scoffed. “He didn’t do it on purpose. Things got away from him. He was trying to help, trying to ease his pain, and the pains of others. But the more he made a fake world, with fake people, the more disappointed he became. It was never *quite* right, you see. So he would try again. And again. Until it was a mess. Until he had no control. Until they came for him, and he had to protect himself. Then things spiraled out of control for real. I don’t forgive him for it, of course.”

“I don’t know what to think about it,” Methos admitted. “It’s a bit more than I ever thought I’d have to deal with.”

“You could stop it,” Kronos-bunny said quietly. “All you’d have to do would be kill him. One slice. One Quickening. And then the future would change.”

“Yes, but change into what? Who would become The One then?”

“Don’t know, but it’d have to be better than this. The end of the world? Just about any other Immortal wouldn’t end up going down such a path.”

“I don’t want this to happen to me,” Methos said. “If I kill him, this could be me. I think I would rather be dead than…this.” He shuddered. Then he looked at Kronos-bunny. “So, are we really just floating in space right now?”

Something angry flared in Kronos-bunny’s eyes. “You wouldn’t have done this. I know you too well, Brother. The last thing you would ever allow would be the destruction of the world.”

“I don’t think it was ever in MacLeod’s plans, either.”

Kronos-bunny looked disgusted, but answered the previous question. “Yes. We’re floating around in space. Inside MacLeod’s beady little head.”

“And this is why you stay out here on the fringe, isn’t it? The center of the mind is in turmoil.”

“You could call it turmoil. Chaos is more like it. But a bad chaos. A deadly chaos.” Kronos-bunny paled. “It’s unhealthy to go near it.”

“Does the MacLeod we saw earlier, does he go near it?”

“Yes. Of course. He *is* it.”

“He told me he was a sliver of the total MacLeod. Is that not true?”

“You speak in riddles that you don’t understand.”

“Help me. Help me understand.” Methos put a hand on Kronos-bunny’s arm. “I want to understand.”

“What is there to understand? Just kill MacLeod when you go back and there’s nothing else to be done!”

“I won’t kill him until I know for sure there is no other way out of this. He said there was no other way, but if it is only a portion of him thinking, then perhaps he can’t see the way, but there is one. I will find it.”

“No,” Kronos-bunny said. “It’s better just to kill him. You’ve killed before. You’ve killed so many. What is this one more?”

“He’s my friend. He’s a good man. And I’m not that killer you remember any longer.” Methos tapped his chest. “In my heart, I know that killing him would be the wrong choice. Let me try to save him.”

“I won’t lose you,” Kronos-bunny stated. His face was set with hatred. “I wish I could kill him. If I only could have killed him before.” Kronos-bunny made a fist. The threat of it was mitigated by it being soft and fuzzy.

“I’ll be careful. Aren’t I always?”

Kronos-bunny did not look appeased and Methos wondered if there was something else. Something Kronos-bunny knew but would not tell him. A premise itched across his mind, vague and undefined, but the sudden appearance of a shadowy figure pushed that thought to the back of his mind. It was time to discuss things with MacLeod again. 

“Are you well?” MacLeod asked as he drew near. “I’ve never invited anyone into my head before. I didn’t know someone could faint.”

Methos studied MacLeod. The man seemed tired, worn out, and faded. This wasn’t the entire MacLeod that he was used to. This man was a fraction of what he should be. He even seemed somehow less distinct and solid. But he seemed genuinely concerned, and he seemed sincere in his belief that the only way to avert total tragedy on a global scale was for Methos to kill him.

“That makes two of us. Of course, a few hours ago, I didn’t know I could get into someone else’s head, so my learning curve is a bit steep.”

“Understood.” MacLeod gave that little smile again, the familiar one that Methos knew from real life, but again, it was just an affectation and not the real thing. It never reached his eyes. 

“Now that you’ve convinced me that you’ve completely destroyed everything I know and love, I want you to convince me that I should solve the problem your way,” Methos said. 

“What could there be to convince?” MacLeod asked. “The tragic end that I’ve shown you should justify my death. It’s a very simple thing. All you have to do is take one head. Of the many heads you’ve taken in your life, this couldn’t be so hard. And I would tell you exactly when to do it, to cause no danger to yourself or to others.”

“A moment when I would have MacLeod’s trust, yes?” Methos asked. “And strike when he would not fear it?”

“Of course. It would be sudden. You would be in no danger.”

“That doesn’t sound like the MacLeod I know. My MacLeod wouldn’t try to convince me to do something the sneaky way.”

“I am not the MacLeod that you know. I am the one that grew from his failure. I am the only thing left of his mind that is not ground to dust or captured in endless chaos.”

“Told you,” muttered Kronos-bunny. 

“You’ll have to show me. I still don’t believe that you can’t stop this any other way.”

“I explained that,” MacLeod said, in a voice strained by exasperation. “In the present moment, the moment we exist in right now, there is nothing left of the world.”

“You brought me here,” Methos pointed out. “Doesn’t that mean you have some control over time? You brought people back from the dead. How can you not have enough power to control time?”

“It is what it is. I do not make the rules. Perhaps if I had my full faculties left, time would not be an obstacle. As it is, I had to send Kronos to you, to ask you to come here. A tenuous connection, but it worked. Now, I have told you all you need to hear about the why. Let me explain when it should be done, and you will relieve me of my misery. If your MacLeod knew what I know now, he would beg you to take his head.”

“I don’t believe you. MacLeod is a fighter. He’d do whatever it took to change the future. If you want to have any chance of truly convincing me that you have no hope at all of taking charge again, or undoing the damage that you did, then you’d better show me everything.”

MacLeod hesitated. “It will be very dangerous for you.”

“I’ll take that chance. As it is, it seems I end up inside your head anyway.”

MacLeod frowned and glanced to Kronos-bunny, who shook his head minutely. It did not escape Methos’ notice. There was something they weren’t telling him, and it was a very big and serious something. He decided to wait and see. Eventually one of them would slip, or else he could glean it from what they didn’t say. Whatever it was, Methos suspected it had to do with his own Quickening. Was he so weak-willed that he had succumbed at once when he’d been beheaded? Was there no essence of him left, unlike Kronos who still maintained his sense of self? Was he hardly a swirl of nothingness inside MacLeod’s vast head?

He pushed away the terror that brought with it. There was no time to be stopped by fear. He had to move forward, he had to understand the whole situation. 

“I will have to make arrangements. Wait here.” MacLeod walked away, fading into the smog. 

“Arrangements,” Methos spat. He looked to Kronos-bunny. “So he can make it look the way he wants it to look when I go to see it. That way I’ll be convinced. Something is rotten in Denmark. If you tell me now, I might have a chance to make things right. What’s really going on?”

“Dear Brother,” Kronos-bunny said. He shook his head and the long pink ears flopped about. “You know all that you need to know. What else is there?”

Methos thought about it. There were a lot of unanswered questions. “Why now? Why not an older or a younger me?”

Kronos-bunny laughed. “Because this is the perfect you.”

“That is not an answer. That is a deflection. Try again.”

Kronos-bunny stilled. He looked around, as if expected the smog to have ears. He looked more like a construct than before, and less like the Kronos that Methos remembered. His Kronos would not have submitted so meekly to the bunny suit. Why didn’t Kronos take the suit off, anyway?

“It’s because—” A shrill cry rent the air and Kronos-bunny immediately changed course. “All in good time, Brother. You will learn why soon enough.”

Perhaps the vastness did have ears, Methos thought. It wasn’t really a place. It was the mind of MacLeod, so anything Kronos-bunny said or did would be noted. Even if he was, as he claimed to be, non-integrated. 

Methos switched to what he hoped would be an easier question. “Why are you wearing that pink rabbit suit?”

“Because I don’t like purple,” Kronos-bunny replied, as if he were in a comedy routine. He was starting to sound less and less like the Kronos that Methos knew. It was worrisome. Did it mean he was slowly integrating? Was MacLeod actually controlling him somehow?

“Could you take it off?”

“If you let me,” Kronos said slyly. “I wear it for you, Brother.”

Methos frowned. That made no sense. “So if I imagined that you were in a different costume. A clown? A cowboy? Then you would be in that costume?”

Kronos-bunny smirked. “No. I wear it for punishment, Brother. Your punishment.”

“I’m not punishing you!” Methos exclaimed. 

“Not yet.” Kronos-bunny had a wild-eyed look and he stared hard at Methos, as if willing him to know something else. As if his answers about the bunny suit were indeed extremely important. Methos shook his head in frustration. He didn’t understand. 

“What did you do that you needed punishing?” Methos asked. 

“It’s because of before, when we were both alive.” Kronos-bunny wrinkled his nose like a real rabbit. “You have a long memory and decided it was funny to make me wear this for all those times I hurt you.”

“Sounds fair to me,” Methos said, “but I don’t remember ever doing it. And I wouldn’t even know how.”

“You will. Someday.” Kronos-bunny drooped. Even his ears looked defeated. “Please, Methos. Do as MacLeod asks. You live, he dies. The world will continue to exist. MacLeod isn’t worth it.” He held out a pink bunny paw. “I would take you back in an instant. Just say yes, and you’ll be home. You can choose your own time to kill him. It won’t make a difference in the long run, not that. That’s just MacLeod trying to make it easier on all involved. It’s the killing that must be done.”

“I want to see more,” Methos said. “Before I agree to anything.” So many parts of it weren’t adding up. Kronos-bunny knew something that he wasn’t telling. Something important. 

“Would it make a difference if I could tell you a time to kill MacLeod where it would be justified? Where he would do something egregious? Something bad?”

“He wouldn’t.”

“Normally no, but everyone makes mistakes. He isn’t perfect.”

Methos studied Kronos-bunny. “You’re lying. There is no such moment coming. Not yet. Are you saying you could manipulate other things in the past? Change something to make it look like MacLeod deserves to die?”

Kronos-bunny looked smug, then shook his head. “Not me.”

MacLeod appeared on the horizon and walked toward their small camp area. “It is done. If you walk with me, we will have a safe path to the center.”

Methos stood up. He felt a little dizzy. “I don’t think being in your head is agreeing with me,” he said as he leaned over and retched. 

“No. You should not stay much longer or else it may be too difficult for you to ever leave.” MacLeod looked up in to the smoggy sky. “Things are happening. We are running out of time.”

Despite feeling sick, Methos followed MacLeod. Walking did make him feel better, but the direction they took made him realize what they had meant about the chaos. The more he walked toward the center of MacLeod’s mind, the less he felt like himself, and the more he felt like he might fly to pieces. Perhaps when he had died he had given himself up, hadn’t been able to hold himself together. He could hardly do so now. 

The landscape changed from gray to orange. Then to dust and dirt, and hard packed, cropless farmsteads. In the distance, old machinery rusted away, everything looking pointed, ominous, and deadly. The machines started to look hungry, almost alive, with grinning maws. 

“Stay strong, Brother,” Kronos-bunny advised. He put a hand on Methos shoulder and Methos felt slightly better. Kronos-bunny was a separate identity from MacLeod, even if they were linked, and his energy gave Methos a boost. Then he let go, and Methos thought perhaps that Kronos looked a little less pink than before. Had he been drained? He had said he didn’t come toward the chaos, for fear of being assimilated. 

“There may not be time, later, to tell you when to kill MacLeod,” MacLeod murmured as they walked. “There will be a moment. It will be only the two of you, and he will trust you to stand guard. You will have talked of trust and of decisions. Philosophy will be thick between you, and you will know that your bond of friendship is as strong as it will ever be. You will trust each other with your lives.”

Methos gagged. “And I kill him then?” How could *that* be the time that he should take MacLeod? In all the glory of trust and friendship?

His friendship with MacLeod was one of his most precious relationships. That they had been able to mend the fault-lines between them showed how deeply they cared, and how much they enjoyed each other’s company. For MacLeod to suggest that Methos use that very friendship as a weapon was abhorrent. He had done such things with others in his dark past but…somehow he had never thought to do so with MacLeod. It was a trust that he had valued more because of it. 

“He will be happy,” MacLeod said. “It will be the happiest he has been in a long time. He will sleep, and he will not be restless. That happiness. That total joy. If you kill him then, at that moment, you will absorb it. It will make a difference in the end.”

“Fuck you,” Methos said. “No. And how come you say he and not I? You’re the same!”

“Not really, no. I am him, but he is not me.” 

They crossed out of the farmstead area and into the bustle of a city. It was a generic city, though, with no people, and plenty of tall buildings that had no doors or windows. Fire hydrants popped up every twenty feet, as if waiting for an enormous fire that would never come. Abandoned yellow taxi cabs sat at the curb, their grills echoing the slavering mouths of the farm equipment. It seemed everything was hungry and ready to devour whatever tasty thing came by, along this path of MacLeod’s broken mind. 

The world, also, was starting to come into color. The farmstead had been sepia toned. The city had been in muted shades of grey, yellow, and red. Now they were walking through a forest glade, which was many shades of green and brown. A small, red flower grew under the canopy. Methos stopped to stare at it for a moment. It was fragile and beautiful, like a drop of crimson blood on the ground. He passed it by, wondering what sort of mind could create these many images, as if moving from one photograph to another. Was it just fragmented? Perhaps he could somehow fuse them into a whole. 

The glade vanished and they walked across a desert. The world became a study in various shades of yellow and tan. 

“How much farther?” Methos asked. He’d had nothing to eat except the vapid tea that Kronos-bunny had given him. He wasn’t hungry, though he felt that enough time had passed that he should be hungry. That was odd. It made him start to think that perhaps this was not a real place at all, or a real experience. 

“Not far now.” MacLeod did not ever seem to tire. 

They passed through a junk yard. Twisted metal loomed over them in great piles, so much of it again resembling mouths and teeth. For the first time Methos could smell the environment. It smelled of vomit and rotten food. He was glad when they passed out of the junk yard section. 

“This is the last circle,” Kronos-bunny whispered to him. “Stay close, or you’ll be lost.”

They steered down a narrow path. On all sides of them were people, everyone standing and staring toward the center. They crowded each other, jostling, ever pressing forward, craning their necks for a look. Methos could hear them murmuring. 

“Who are they?” Methos asked. 

“All the memories, all the people. Among them, all those whose heads were taken. They stand and wait to be called upon, they stand and wait to be acknowledged. Most of them are half-assimilated.”

Methos noted that many were faded, blurred on the edges, or graying out like wetted paper. 

“They would suck our energy from us, if they could. MacLeod has made the journey safe for us with this passage.” Kronos-bunny didn’t look comfortable or pleased. “I try not to come this close.”

It seemed to take a long time to travel the distance through the thronged crowd. Methos walked close to Kronos-bunny. “Tell me now,” he whispered. “While he’s busy getting us through. Why am I here now? What’s the truth? Why me?”

Kronos-bunny kept his eyes on MacLeod’s back. “You’re in between for a moment. Dead, but not dead. We can only come for you at this time.”

MacLeod looked back suddenly, his eyes narrowed, and Kronos-bunny stopped speaking. But it had been enough. One more little piece fell into place for Methos. 

They reached the end, ahead of them was a bright piercing light. “We’re here,” MacLeod stated. He had stopped in front of the shining curve of another bubble. “Don’t touch.”

Methos stopped and stared. It was a dome-like structure. As tall as a house, and inside all was turmoil. Streaks of color, sparkles, whizzes of energy, coils of lightning, everything moved and tumbled and exploded inside the dome. Just outside the surface, he could hear and feel nothing, but the translucency of the dome allowed it to be observed. “Where is MacLeod?” he asked dumbly. 

“That is MacLeod,” Kronos-bunny told him. “He’s not quite himself at the moment.” He chuckled. 

MacLeod shot him a scathing look. “That is what I have not yet been able to calm.” He looked down at himself. “All that I am is out here, yet, in there also. Except, in there, it is chaos.” He looked flushed and sweaty. “It is a strain,” he said, “being this close and not…becoming One again.” He looked at Methos. “You must see now? Why? There can never again be cohesion. All is lost. I am but the tiniest fragment of the whole.”

“I see.” Unthinking, Methos reached out to touch the bubble wall and MacLeod grabbed his arm and flung him back. 

“Do not touch!” MacLeod stood over him, seething. The mix of emotions in his face told more of the story, Methos thought. Fear and excitement. What would a simple touch actually do to the bubble-dome? “It is too dangerous for you, you could be lost inside.”

Methos nodded and stood again. “But to kill him,” he said, and it felt like capitulation.

“He would tell you it should be done, if he could understand what we have shown you here today.”

“Why not just go to him?” Methos asked. “You contacted me through a shared Quickening. Surely you could have contacted him straight out.”

“It was too dangerous. To contact him might be to draw him into this.” MacLeod was really heaving now, his face was as dark and red as a beet. “I can’t hold us here much longer, we need to retreat.”

Methos swayed on his feet. Something inside the bubble was calling to him. “What else?” he heard himself asking. “What else triggered the breakdown?” He could almost understand the whispers coming from the dome. They were trying to tell him something. He could *feel* MacLeod’s presence now. “MacLeod?” he asked. 

“Nothing else,” the MacLeod next to him said. “Nothing else.”

Methos realized he wasn’t feeling well again. A wave of nausea swept over him. “Something is wrong,” he said as he fell to his knees. Kronos-bunny crouched near him. 

“Remember, Brother. You must kill him. Soon. As soon as you can manage it.”

Everything was melting, and Methos realized that his time here had finally come to an end. Kronos-bunny melted into a giant sweep of pinkness, and then there was nothing. 

 

 

 

_Chapter 4_

 

“Shit,” Joe said as he made his way over to the couch. “He’s dead.”

“Dead?” Duncan echoed. “In my house?” He wandered over, and sure enough, Methos was dead. His heart gave a lurch. But his head was still attached, so it was alright. Methos should revive. Except he wasn’t, and time was passing. 

“What happened?”

Joe fiddled with the couch pillow and then turned to Methos, his fingers nimbly gauging for holes. Any wound would be gone, but there could be evidence of something else. “I think he was shot. Look.” Joe pointed to a small hole in Methos’ shirt where a patch of blood had spread and dried. 

“It’s dry already,” Duncan said. “He’d have revived by now.”

Joe was already following the direction of the shot backwards to the wall, to the window. He stood and went to push aside the drapes. “You’ve got three cop cars in your back lot. And people out on their porches. We didn’t see them from the front. Looks like a shooting.” He sighed. “You had to buy something to try and revitalize a bad neighborhood, didn’t you?”

“It’s a hobby,” Duncan tried to explain. He and Methos would revive, but not Joe. He decided not to invite Joe over so much. It was safer not to. 

“I hear badminton is a much nicer hobby,” Joe commented dryly. “Anyway, it doesn’t look like they know a bullet went astray. They shouldn’t but, if they do come to the door, we’ll play dumb.” He headed for the kitchen. “I’ll get dinner started.”

“Thanks,” Duncan called out absently. He was staring at Methos lying on the couch. He looked like he’d been sleeping when it had happened. He looked serene, peaceful even. He looked…Duncan swallowed. Dead. He looked absolutely dead. As if whatever was Methos on the inside wasn’t there. What a crazy idea, he thought. Methos would revive. Immortals always revived. 

Absently he reached out to touch Methos’ hair. It was soft. He pushed it off his forehead. What this man did to his insides. The years had been good to them. They had gotten over some bumps, built some bridges, and now Duncan found that he often dreamed of perhaps having more.

With a friendship so solid, so right, it seemed only natural to take it to the next level. He thought he had detected a glimmer in Methos’ eyes every once in a rare while, when he let his guards down. But it was slim evidence to go on. No. If anything was to happen, Duncan would have to make the first move. 

He’d determined so long ago that loving an Immortal would be unwise—and loving Methos would be worse. What could be more dangerous? He’d have sold his own soul to keep Methos safe. 

But here he was, now. Dead on his couch. Not breathing. And the time was right, wasn’t it? They had no drama in their life at the moment. It was a calm in the storm. Even Joe had commented on how other Immortals had all seemed to cease hostilities for the time being. 

Duncan was tired of having that last barrier between them. Of not having the privilege of being able to reach out. To touch, to hold, to grab into a quick bear hug, or to tease. 

“Damn it.” Joe came out of the kitchen. He had his cell phone in his hand. “Watcher business. Computer system has gone loopy. Damnedest thing. It’s like someone knew the codes and told it to start printing out every page ever entered. I have to go handle this.”

“We’ll do dinner another night, Joe,” Duncan said. Inside, he was rejoicing. It meant an evening with just Methos and him. It felt like a sign. Tonight he would tell Methos what he felt. Tonight. “Methos is here for an undetermined amount of time. I’m sure we can organize another dinner.”

“Sure.” Joe was back on his cell phone, barking orders at someone to shut off the goddamned grid. Then he was gone. 

Duncan checked his progress through the window, to make sure no stray bullets took him out, too, and then turned his attention back to Methos. 

The man seemed determined to stay dead this time. Duncan lightly traced the curve of his ear. 

Then he gathered himself up and went into the kitchen. A nice meal would help soften the blow of sudden reckless homicide in his home. 

Dinner was ready half an hour later and Methos still was not alive. Duncan was actually worried. What had the bullet done? Severed his spine? There had been no Quickening. Why was Methos still dead?

He knelt down by the couch and placed his hands on either side of Methos’ face and called to him. He felt foolish, but it was at least something to try. “Methos,” he said softly. “Come back, come back to me. I want to tell you I love you.” He repeated his call twice, then sat back on his heels. 

A moment later, as if on cue, Methos heaved in a deep breath and sat up, disoriented and confused. “MacLeod?” he said. He looked bewildered. “I had the strangest dream.”

Duncan couldn’t keep the joy out of his heart, and out of his smile. “You’ve been dead for a while,” he said. “I made dinner.”

“Dead?” Methos frowned. Then to himself he muttered, “In-between. Dead and not dead, and not alive. I see now.” He looked straight up at Duncan, his gaze penetrating. “I think it might not have been a dream. But I can’t remember most of it.”

“It was a dream, don’t fret.” Duncan explained about the bullet and the scene outside. Methos nodded, but he seemed dazed. “Come, I made dinner. There’s a very good merlot.” 

Methos followed him to the table, still mostly preoccupied with the dream he claimed to have had. Duncan had once dreamed while dead. But only the once. He’d heard some Immortals say they dreamed all the time, and others claim that they knew nothing from life to death and back again. 

Dinner was subdued. The steaks were hearty, the baked potatoes perfectly done, and the broccoli steamed to what Duncan thought was perfection. He drank more wine than he should have, but part of him was preparing his courage. Tonight, he told himself as he watched Methos salt and pepper his broccoli. Tonight I’ll make him understand, and then all our nights will be dinners together. And sleep no longer spent apart. 

He cleared the dishes away and Methos sat at the table finishing his glass of wine. Methos had also had more wine than perhaps he usually did, Duncan noticed. He hoped it meant that Methos was also thinking about their relationship. About the possibilities that could be if they could just admit their feelings, overcome their fears and hesitations. 

“Methos, I wanted to tell you something,” he began. He poured the last of the wine into Methos’ glass. 

“Is it serious?” Methos asked. His face was calm, but something in his eyes told Duncan that he expected bad news. 

“Not in the way you think.” Duncan sat down and drained his wine in one last unromantic gulp. “I’ve been thinking about you lately.” He was out of practice. He remembered wooing others with far more finesse. He reached out to grasp Methos’ hand with his. “I was hoping you felt the same way.”

Methos looked bewildered. “Way?” he echoed. He looked down at his hand where Duncan had grasped it. “I--”

Duncan decided he needed to be more direct, less diplomatic. He leaned in and caught Methos in a kiss. 

After a split moment, Methos kissed back. 

The rest of the night went equally as well. Duncan led Methos to the bedroom. They showered together, taking time to slowly touch, to knead muscles, to kiss and kiss again. 

The wine had gone to Duncan’s head and into his blood, and when they finally made it to the bed, he was consumed with lust, and filled with desire, all fueled by the love he had finally broached out loud. Methos moaned his words back at him. Love, and desire. Wanting for so long, never daring.

The sheets were cool beneath his heated body and everything unquenched was due to be satiated. Duncan rode high on his emotion, making love, and giving love, and granting love, with every fiber that he possessed. It felt right, good, and wonderful. 

When they were spent, and Duncan had his arms and legs entwined with Methos’, and the covers had been pulled up to keep the chilled air off their fevered skin, he kissed Methos on the throat. “Love you,” he said softly. He wanted to make sure Methos knew this was for real, this was forever. “I’ve loved you for so long, and I never said. Just the thought of you makes me happier than anything else.”

“Shhh. It doesn’t matter,” Methos said back. He looked sated and drowsy. “I’d take you even if you didn’t. My heart was always yours.”

Duncan was fast falling asleep. “Trust you. I want you to know that. I would trust you with my life.” He felt Methos stiffen slightly behind him. 

“Be right back,” Methos whispered, and climbed off the bed. The bathroom door opened, a gleam of light came out, and then Methos shut it again. 

Duncan dozed. He was happy and content. How many years had he considered his relationship with Methos? Too many. Somehow, this night, it seemed…perfect. Destined to work out. 

That Methos loved him back seemed both obvious and surprising. How had that come to pass? What had transpired to make them both forgive the other their faults, their histories? Duncan didn’t know, and he was too sleepy to dwell much on it. He wanted to live in the moment. 

Except the moment seemed to stretch out too long. His bed was empty, the other side of it grown cold now. How long had Methos been in that bathroom?

Duncan pushed up to his elbows. He’d fallen asleep for a little while. He glanced at the clock. An hour. Methos had been in the bathroom for an hour. 

Duncan pulled on his shorts and yawned. They’d have to sleep in, maybe, to catch up on some lost rest. That would be fun. He supposed he’d like morning sex with Methos just as much as he liked after-dinner sex. 

“Methos?” he called and gave a quick knock on the door. Their intimacy was brand new, after all. He should give the man some privacy. At least let him know he would be interrupted. “Methos?”

Duncan pushed the door open and the first thing he saw was all the blood. 

He stopped, his pulse pounding in his ears. Blood in his bathroom? He quickly sized up the rest of the room. Methos was in the tub. Dead. 

His head was attached. 

Duncan felt his emergency response ratchet down a notch. Not permanent. He stumbled forward. The floor was wet from bathwater spilled over the edge. There was blood on the tiles of the bathtub-shower area. It looked smeared, as if Methos had reached up and finger-painted his own blood on the walls. A knife was on the floor. Duncan knocked it away.

Methos was in the tub, head back, eyes open. He was definitely dead. 

Duncan reached in and pulled the drain and the sloshy pink water started to lower. He could hear the drain work, flooding the pipes with the retreating tide. Methos didn’t have any obvious injuries. Whatever he’d done had already healed. He should be alive again, soon. 

His skin was cold. Duncan retrieved several towels. He spread a couple on the floor to soak up the spilled water, and held another in his arms. He waited. 

Whatever Methos had done, Duncan dearly hoped there would be a good explanation for it. 

He also hoped Methos had a good answer for why it was taking him so long to revive. 

 

 

 

_Chapter 5_

Kronos-bunny had shown up just as soon as he’d cut himself, Methos noted. He hadn’t been quite entirely dead, but it’d been close enough for Kronos-bunny to make an appearance. 

“You rang?” Kronos-bunny asked. He still looked ridiculous in his pink rabbit suit with the cotton white tail and the long floppy ears. 

“You bastards,” Methos said. “You knew, all along, what would happen tonight. That tonight was the night, and you showed me all those things. And just like MacLeod said, he was happy. He trusted me.” Methos was sick with disgust. They had wanted him to retrieve his sword and kill Duncan in cold blood, in his own house. After he had made love to him. 

“It’s not too late,” Kronos-bunny said. He reached out a paw and wiped away some blood from Methos’ wrist. He licked it. “You always did taste so exotic, Brother.” He gave a satisfied little sigh and then he used the rest to paint a little picture of a lightning strike on the tub tile. “You’ll heal in a moment. You can just go in there and take his head. He’s happy. He’ll die a happy man.”

“Fuck you. I’m not doing it. I’ll never do it. I just wanted to tell you. Just in case this was real. You had better come up with a different plan to save the world.”

Kronos-bunny grew angry. “Is he worth your life, Brother? Your life? He’d kill you. In an instant. To save the world. Don’t ever doubt that. It’s kill or be killed. And I, for one, would rather save you than him.” Kronos-bunny spat out the words. His contempt for MacLeod was plain. “He’ll destroy you and then the whole world. And you’ll let him do it because he’s good in bed?”

Methos shook his head. “I want to see MacLeod again. Take me to see MacLeod. I want a better explanation. I don’t understand.”

“MacLeod doesn’t want to see you. He’s tired from earlier. It’s tough having a visitor inside one’s head mucking about with everything. Especially one as rude and annoying as you tend to be.”

“There has to be something else. Some other way. We have time, don’t we? How much time is there? Tell me when I lose my head.” Methos paused. He looked down at his arms. They were healed already. He climbed out of the tub and pulled on a bathrobe. 

Kronos-bunny was sulking. He was rinsing off his bloodied paw in the sink. 

Methos went over to him, touched his shoulder. “When do I die?” he asked. “How much time do I have?”

“It won’t help you, Brother. I agree with MacLeod. Kill him now and you’ll avert the problem. Come on, now. When have you ever known the two of us to agree to anything? If we agree, it must be the right thing to do.”

“What starts MacLeod down his path? He’s a good, honest man right now. The man out in that bedroom, sleeping right now, with his neck bare and vulnerable, is not the same man who would destroy the world. Something happened to change him. What was it?”

“If I won’t answer your other question, what makes you think I would answer this one?”

Methos stopped, stunned, a sudden realization dawning on him. “My death? I do that to him?” He sunk down to his knees. “You damned bastards. You could have just told me not to sleep with him. Would have been a lot easier to do.”

Kronos-bunny smirked. Methos noticed that he’d gotten a trace of blood on one pink cheek. “We explored that option. It wouldn’t have solved the problem.”

“Only his death solves the problem. Only that.” Methos shook his head. “It’s been just one night. I can leave. It won’t mean that much to either of us.”

“Too late, Brother.” Kronos rubbed his pink paw against Methos’ chin. “The die is cast on that point. MacLeod will never be free of you now.” Kronos-bunny caught Methos up in a hug that wasn’t comforting or confining, it was just arms wrapped around him. Kronos-bunny whispered into his ear, “He’s coming through the door in a minute. He’s going to be very upset about what you did. It’s going to cause a lot of trouble. In fact, this is the beginning of what starts to unhinge him. It’s not the zenith of it all, dear Brother. Only the alpha. But he will worry about you from this day forward, and it can never be set right.”

“You set me up,” Methos said. “Both you and MacLeod. To give me only one recourse? To kill him?”

“Time to go, Brother. He can’t find us here together. Then he would surely go insane.” Kronos-bunny pulled his arms tighter and Methos felt the world start to become smoother and waxy. Just as Duncan came through the door, they finally melted away. 

They were back on the fringe of everything, back in the vast whiteness of it all. 

“Why did you do that? I should have been there to explain!” Methos shouted. 

Kronos-bunny gave a maddening shrug. “You can explain when you revive. You wanted to talk with MacLeod, you said. He’ll he along soon enough.” 

Methos waited impatiently. He paced, but not far from Kronos-bunny. He didn’t want to get lost in all that whiteness. He peered all around. They had gone toward the center before. He wondered what happened if you pushed out at the edges. 

“What’s in this for you?” Methos demanded of Kronos-bunny. “Why are you helping MacLeod? Why are you agreeing with him? You hated him with every bit of you.”

“I still do hate him. I loathe him.” Kronos-bunny pushed an ear out of his way. “But he and I have one thing in common. That’s you. We both want your safety.”

“My safety,” Methos grunted. “It doesn’t sound like either of you have done a very good job--” He stopped. “That’s why, isn’t it? If MacLeod becomes The One, then I have to die. He’s trying to reverse it. He’s trying to subvert it from ever happening. Has it all been a lie? Everything you’ve shown me? The world never was destroyed, was it?” Methos flipped his hand at Kronos-bunny. “The two of you, in cahoots. Lying. Trying to make me murder Duncan. How do you think I’d *feel*?” Methos stomped around. “Of course not, you figured if you came up with this elaborate story, that I had to kill him to save the world—oh, no—nothing too grandiose for your lies—just the fate of the world—that I would feel justified. That I would think it couldn’t be helped. Well, you got that wrong.” 

“We didn’t lie.” MacLeod was standing nearby and Methos didn’t remember noticing him appear. Now that Methos had seen the real thing recently, he noticed how this MacLeod did look different. His hair was not the right color, he was too tall, he was too thin. He looked like he was strung out on drugs. His eyes were flat and unyielding.

“Of course you did. Don’t deny it. It makes sense. It’s what MacLeod would do. We end up together until I die, isn’t that it?”

“Yes, but--” Kronos-bunny was cut off with a displeased wave from MacLeod. 

“I wish that had been the plan,” MacLeod said. “I’d have willingly died to be able to save you.” He came close to Methos, brushed the back of his fingers across his cheek. “I’ve missed you so much. So many lonely years. Dreaming of my memories of you.”

“You could have said something earlier,” Methos muttered. 

“It wasn’t time yet, you didn’t know. I had not yet come home to find you on my couch. Accidentally murdered by those hoodlums in the neighborhood.” MacLeod smiled, and this time it actually had a touch of real emotion to it. Still, his voice was flat, and everything about him was oddly un-MacLeodish. Methos felt repulsed and pulled back. 

MacLeod grabbed his hand, stopping him. “We only have a little while yet before you revive. I would ask….” 

Kronos-bunny glowered and looked angry. Methos remembered the times they had shared, and decided it was just bitterness. 

“Duncan?” Methos asked, unsure. 

MacLeod’s features softened with emotion and he suddenly did look a lot more like the real thing. “Come with me,” he said, and took Methos’ hand and the whiteness melted down, and Methos found himself standing in a bedroom. 

It had a luxuriously large bed with opulent sheets and a duvet. It looked something like a hotel room, with chairs and a wooden desk. Lamps cast yellowed circles on the ceiling. The paintings on the expensive brown wallpapered walls were innocuous. The carpet on the floor was lush, but durable. 

“It was one of my favorite nights,” MacLeod explained. “We were on vacation. Traveling. I forget what city.”

“Of course.” Methos felt unsettled. This MacLeod had brought them to a facsimile of a hotel room from his memories—a room that Methos had yet to know. Something wasn’t quite right. 

MacLeod pulled him gently toward the bed. “We haven’t much time. You’ll revive soon.” 

“Why here?” Methos asked as MacLeod began to touch him. The man’s hands were dry and cold, papery almost, and not singing with desire like Duncan’s had been earlier. Methos wondered how he was going to keep them straight in his head. Present-Duncan. Future-MacLeod. “I don’t remember this night.”

“I do. You and I. It was a very special night.” MacLeod leaned in to kiss Methos, and he smelled faintly of…Methos wasn’t sure. It didn’t smell exactly like Duncan. He didn’t feel exactly amorous toward this all-wrong MacLeod, but he also couldn’t compel himself to move away. He was starting to feel fuzzy again. 

“I think I’m about to go,” he said weakly. 

“I know. Next time, maybe,” MacLeod said. “Remember this room. It will be another chance for you. Another chance to take my head.”

“Damn,” Methos said as everything started to go black. He hadn’t gotten any of the answers he’d wanted. “I’m not killing anyone.” 

 

 

 

_Chapter 6_

Methos gasped to life and Duncan caught him before he could drop back and crack his head. He was cold and his teeth were chattering. He looked at Duncan and then at the rest of the bathroom. 

Duncan wondered what he was really thinking. He couldn’t tell from his expression. If he had to guess, it would have been confusion about how he had ended up in the bathtub. Duncan had the distinct impression that Methos had somehow forgotten that he’d killed himself in Duncan’s bathtub. 

He spoke through chattering teeth. “Sorry, Duncan. I didn’t mean to make such a mess. I’ll clean it up.”

“You’ll rinse off and get into bed. We’ll clean it up in the morning.” Duncan eased his arm under Methos to help him stand. He’d been dead for a long time, although Duncan couldn’t figure out why. He’d been perfectly healed up and there had been no reason for him not to revive sooner. It worried him. 

Methos nodded and Duncan turned the water on hot. Then he retreated to give Methos some privacy. Although not too much. He sat on the bed and watched the bathroom door, jumping at every noise. If he thought that Methos would do it again, he would rush in there and stop it. 

Two deaths in one day, Duncan told himself. One on accident, one on purpose. Both somehow related, his instincts told him. He didn’t like it one bit. Why had Methos done it? It still hurt to die. Being dead was always dangerous. You couldn’t protect yourself in that state. Methos must have at least felt safe to do such a thing. Right after he and Duncan had made love. 

Duncan shook his head. He was reading into it too much. It didn’t mean anything, the timing of it. 

It made him feel sick, just thinking about it, though. Why? He couldn’t stop asking himself why. 

And he didn’t know if it was something he could ask Methos. At least, not yet. They’d been friends for years. And lovers for half of one night. Had that really changed everything?

Duncan knew he had to find out. He had to help Methos. Keep him safe from whatever it was that caused his gut to knot up in worry. Somehow. 

It seemed to take forever, but Methos eventually emerged from the bathroom. Duncan realized that he must have been cleaning up in there. Methos came and sat down next to him on the bed. 

“Before you get all crazy,” Methos began, “I just want you to know that was a one time thing. It was not an accident. It was on purpose.” He was looking straight ahead, not at Duncan. “I had a very, very good reason. Which I can’t tell you. I have no plans to do it again. I don’t want you wondering about it, or worrying, or worrying about me. I’m fine. Okay?”

“I don’t understand,” Duncan said. “What reasons could you possibly have had?” He found he couldn’t keep the sibilance of hurt out of his voice. He wanted to scream at Methos—what sort of reason would make you leave your lover’s bed and kill yourself in the bathtub? It had been efficient, Duncan gave him that. If Duncan hadn’t woken up, he’d never been the wiser about it. That galled him. For something of this magnitude…about Methos…and to not know….

Methos leaned in and kissed him on the cheek, just in front of his ear. His finger’s curled around the nape of Duncan’s neck. “You smell good. You smell right.” Methos sounded satisfied at that. “Just forget it ever happened, and don’t worry about it. I thought it was something I had to do.”

Methos crawled into bed and Duncan went after him. But even as he wrapped his arms around Methos, snuggling them together, he wondered if at any moment he might wake up to find his bed empty, and his lover dead. 

In the morning, he was glad to see that Methos was still asleep. He had stolen all the covers, but he was there. Alive, and sleeping. With a small, turned down frown at the corner of his lips. 

Duncan nudged him, and hoped he dispelled the nightmare.

 

 

 

_Chapter 7_

The hotel room showed up sooner than Methos expected it to. 

They’d been dating for less than a year when Duncan had surprised him with one year anniversary tickets for a variety of cities, culminating in a cruise to a bunch of islands with beaches, where they’d get off and stay at one of the islands before hopping a plane back home. It sounded like a dream vacation.

“No,” Methos said. “I don’t want to go.” In his mind’s eye he could see the hotel room. He could still feel the Future MacLeod touching him. He hated even the memory of it. 

“What? Why? It’s vacation. You just finished your semester of teaching. I’ve got loads of time. Joe says that the Immortal lull is still in effect. He says they haven’t recorded a Challenge in over a year. There’s hardly anything to worry about.”

“No, Duncan. Just no. The last thing I want to do is travel. Boats make me seasick. I hate flying. I hate hotels.” He shuddered. Where along the way would that hotel be? At the beginning or the end? In the middle somewhere, waiting for him to mete out Duncan’s death sentence? In his mind’s eye he could see the dull paintings, the expensive brown wallpaper, and just thinking about that hotel room gave him chills. He never wanted to even be in that room. Avoiding the room meant perhaps he could avert the whole thing, change what might come to pass.

“Flying is very safe. And we can get you a patch or something for the boat. They have a lot of medications now for air sickness and sea sickness.” Duncan had a funny look in his eye, a stubborn look. He was giving a gift, Methos knew, and it was a gift from the heart. He wouldn’t understand Methos’ sudden reticence about the travel. Usually Methos loved traveling. 

“I won’t. You go. It’s okay for you to go. Have a good time. I’m staying here.”

“Did something happen?” Duncan asked quietly. “I don’t remember a fight. We were getting along just fine. Did I miss something?”

You missed everything, Methos wanted to tell him. You missed a giant pink rabbit costume with Kronos inside. You missed meeting your future self who keeps telling me to whack you out of existence. You missed the end of the world. But Methos didn’t say any of that. For one, it had all started to seem like a bad dream. For another, it would cause Duncan to be considerably put out, if the phrase “put out” somehow meant a total and absolute meltdown of immeasurable proportions.

Methos didn’t want him put out about anything that he did, anything with even the slightest whiff of oddness or possibility of bringing up a not-forgotten incident. He knew Duncan was still perturbed about his actions in the bathtub, and about the length of time it had taken him to revive. Even a year of absolutely nothing happening hadn’t dulled that worry. He supposed that for men who lived as long as they did, that one year seemed very short. 

“Nothing happened,” Methos told him. “I love you. But I don’t want to go on this vacation. In fact, let’s never go on vacation. Home is very nice.”

Duncan looked suspicious. “You didn’t buy tickets elsewhere, did you? And intend them as a surprise?” He suddenly looked relieved. “Of course, that’s it. You had something planned and I ruined it.”

Methos hadn’t planned anything except perhaps a quiet dinner at home. Home didn’t look like that hotel room, and Duncan smelled like Duncan. “It was just in the planning stages,” he lied. 

“So you didn’t put any money down, then?” Duncan was all smiles. “This one is already planned. We can do your idea next year.” He bent down and kissed Methos on the nape of the neck. “Love you.” He moved away happily, convinced that all was well. 

Methos sat and stared out the window. Perhaps he was losing his mind. He was very old. Older than anyone else. How long did the human brain last? Even if it was Immortal, there had to be a limit. He had reached that limit, maybe. His brain cells were brittle. The chemicals had stopped flowing between the synapses. The synapses were rusted shut.

He still believed that his visit with Kronos-bunny and MacLeod had been real. He’d done it twice—visited the future mind of MacLeod, The One. But bad dreams could occur more than once, too, so he always doubted.

So either his brain could not tell reality from fantasy, or it had all been real. 

Was the end of the world very near? Was his own death near? What would happen to Duncan?

He reached out for the phone and dialed Joe. He didn’t do field work anymore, now that he was older, but he managed things at the Watchers. He was high up, a big muckity muck. He knew everything. “Hi Joe,” Methos said. “I had a question.”

“Sure, Adam.” Joe had never gotten over the habit of calling him Adam. It meant that Methos just kept picking new fictional aliases with the first name of Adam. It had become something of a joke between now. “Shoot.”

“Duncan mentioned the lull again. What’s going on? Any historical precedent?”

Joe laughed. “He sprung those travel plans on you, didn’t he? You’re worried about traveling.”

“Something like that.”

“It’s the darnedest thing. Really. It’s like…everyone is waiting for something to happen. No one is even starting Challenges anymore. No fights, nothing. At least that we can tell. Maybe it has all gone underground.” Methos could hear Joe tapping on the keyboard as he spoke. “No historical precedent. We’ve never seen anything like it.”

“That’s interesting,” Methos said. “But no way to know how long it’ll last?” 

“Doesn’t seem to be. I’d think you’d know better than anyone.”

“I don’t,” Methos assured him. “And no ideas on what has happened? No reports from the field? Theories?”

“Lots of theories. None of them good ones.” Joe’s voice took on a more serious tone. “One theory. I bet you already know it.”

“The Gathering.”

“Yeah. But it seems like the opposite, doesn’t it? An anti-Gathering.”

“It does.” Methos stared out the window again. Perhaps the world already knew its fate? Perhaps it was just waiting for him to do the job he’d been handed. Was that Future MacLeod’s doing? Could he somehow affect Immortals inclinations to fight? How much time did he really have? He considered that. He could ask again. He hadn’t been dead since that night in the bathtub. But if he planned it better, if he went somewhere that Duncan wouldn’t find him, then it would be okay. It could be an experiment. If he was wrong, then he’d just revive. A little pain, a little trouble, and perhaps a lot of answers. 

Maybe he could stop having nightmares over that hotel room.

“I can hear those wheels turning in your head,” Joe remarked. “What deep thoughts are you thinking?”

“I was wishing I could see into the future.”

“I hear that. I’d buy me a lottery ticket.” Joe laughed. “Catch you later, Adam.”

Methos hit the off button on the phone. With the vacation looming ahead of him, and the prospect of a familiar hotel room just around the corner, would it be wrong to attempt to shake more answers out of Kronos-bunny?

He could hear Duncan puttering around in the kitchen. He couldn’t do it here. It would be safe, but Duncan would see. It would upset him. 

Joe’s place? No. Best not to bring Joe into it. 

All his other common haunts were full of people, and mortals at that. He’d have to find somewhere quiet where he wouldn’t be discovered. He thought about it for a long moment. There was a favorite secluded glade in the park where they sometimes hiked. If he went off the path then no one would discover him. It had a small risk, but it would be worth it. 

Besides, on the rarest of chances that he was discovered, then maybe they wouldn’t go on the trip and then there would be no familiar hotel room. 

“I’m going out to look for a book,” Methos lied as he passed Duncan. “Be back soon as I can.” 

Duncan waved and kept on fussing about in the kitchen. 

Methos had hardly gotten outside the house, though, when he sensed a Presence. An unfamiliar man detached himself from a telephone pole from across the street and raced over. He pulled a long sword from his coat and with a crazed abandon stabbed Methos in the chest. 

Methos gasped and toppled over. Pain exploded throughout him.

The man was panting and wild eyed. He screamed into the sky. “I did it! I fucking did it for you! Now stop tormenting me.” He leaned down and spoke to Methos. He seemed contrite, but harried, obviously pushed over the edge. “I’m so sorry, man. The voices, they wouldn’t leave me alone. The man in the bunny suit. He told me I had to. Every night for a month, in my dreams. It was pink, always pink.”

Methos tried to nod. “Run,” he whispered. He couldn’t breath, couldn’t get enough air. Duncan was coming. He could sense him coming closer. “Run,” he said again. “MacLeod….”

The strange Immortal seemed to finally realize that Methos wasn’t the only Immortal in the house. That he was in danger. He pulled his sword out of Methos’ chest with a swift, jarring motion. 

Methos turned over and hacked up blood. 

He could hear Duncan thudding through the door now, feel his energy pressing outward. His katana was out, and he started to chase after the man.

Methos called to him, or at least made a gurgling sound. Don’t, he wanted to say. Stay here. Not his fault; Kronos-bunny made him do it. 

On the sidewalk, Duncan paused, and turned back, kneeling down next to Methos. He grasped him under the arms and hauled him back into the house and out of sight. 

Methos panted on the floor in the entryway, and a bright red mist flew from his mouth with every heaving expiration. Duncan was hovering over him, saying something, asking questions. Getting covered in the bright red mist. Then Duncan was gone for moment, off to retrieve something, Methos didn’t know what. 

He turned his head, and there was Kronos-bunny. 

“Hurts, doesn’t it, Brother?” Kronos-bunny said. He grinned with malice. “We needed to talk with you again.”

Methos sat up. He touched his chest. Healed. Which meant he was dead. “That was a bit of a spectacle, don’t you think, Brother?” he asked acidly. “I was on my way to visit you already. A little less publicly, of course.”

Kronos-bunny frowned. He looked suspicious. “You were?”

“I was! If you’d waited about an hour, we could have chatted then. Unless something is about to happen very soon that I need to know about?” Methos glared at Kronos-bunny.

“Strange,” Kronos-bunny said, considering the information. 

“Why strange?”

“That never happened before.”

“Before?”

Kronos-bunny realized he had let something slip and he stiffened. “MacLeod is returning. We must go.”

Methos narrowed his eyes. “He could see you? Here, like this? I’m dead and you’re here? Why not just talk with him, explain whatever it is?”

“He can’t see me, nor you. But he would sense something strange. He’s not the important one at this moment. You are.” 

“Kronos--” Methos started to protest, but the world was melting again. Even Duncan, as he re-entered the foyer melted away into a little puddle. Nothing was left except brilliant white. 

“Ah, here we are,” Kronos-bunny said. He rubbed his paws together.

“I suppose so,” Methos agreed sourly. It wasn’t a bad dream after all, but a real nightmare. “So what did you want to talk about?”

“I think you know.” Kronos-bunny crossed his arms and gave Methos a hard stare. 

“We’ve already had that conversation. I’m still not going to kill MacLeod. And you haven’t explained why it has got to be me, anyway. How about that poor schmuck you had come along and skewer me? Another few nights of your pleasant company and he’d go after the devil himself if you told him to.” Methos remembered Kronos-bunny’s words. “And why were you so surprised that I was trying to come here to talk with you?”

Kronos-bunny’s eyes darted around, but MacLeod was nowhere in sight. “You never did that before,” he finally said begrudgingly. 

Methos weighed the answer. Kronos-bunny was being very careful with his wording. “You don’t mean before as in the time between now and the last time I was here, do you?”

“No,” Kronos-bunny said between gritted teeth. His cottony tail quivered with resentment. 

“You mean something else. What exactly do you mean?”

“You think you’re the first run through. You always do. Ego, that’s what you have, dear Brother. Over-weaning and overcomplicated. You think too much. You just need to follow the plan. There are only two choices. Kill MacLeod and you live, and the whole world lives. Or don’t kill MacLeod, and he becomes The One, and the whole world is destroyed.”

Methos was following the logic slowly. “How many times have we run through this scenario, anyway? Do you mean to tell me I always choose to let Duncan live?”

The bitter expression on Kronos-bunny’s face was pure hatred. “Yes, Brother. That is what I am telling you. We’ve tried countless times. It’s not the first time, nor the last, that I’m put into this stupid rabbit debacle.”

Methos waved away the pink bunny costume. It wasn’t important. He was trying to digest the other issues. The complicated time-stream dilemmas and paradoxes.

“It isn’t that hard to understand,” MacLeod said, and Methos looked up. He hadn’t realized he’d arrived, although given that the entire construct of the space was MacLeod, he supposed he’d never really left. “You are the only Methos that matters right now, at this moment. Those of you that came before already made their choice. Those behind you will follow in your footsteps unless nudged away. It has always led to the destruction of the world. You have always chosen your love for me over all else.” MacLeod put his hands to each side of Methos’ face. “Understand this when I tell you, if I knew then what I know now, I would willingly fall under your blade. To save the world, I would gladly die.”

“Why me? Why not someone else?” Methos asked. 

MacLeod was quiet for a moment. “I’ve tried others, but there are few that I can contact far enough in the past for it to make enough of a difference. The Quickening that we shared--” he gave a nod to Kronos-bunny who glowered again at the mention of his own permanent death “—it is enough. And also….” MacLeod rubbed the palm of his hand against Methos’ cheek. He looked infinitely sad, and Methos could see the terrible toll that the guilt and the burden of all that had happened had taken. “And also because I love you. You will take my Quickening and in that way we will never be apart. I can think of no one else whom I would trust more to give me a swift death. Nor anyone else in whom I would want my essence to survive within.”

Methos couldn’t speak. He shook his head. He didn’t want this.

“I’ve shown you the hotel room,” MacLeod continued. “Do it there. I’ll be happy. Very happy. If you wait until then, I will remember it, no matter what happens to my Quickening. I will always remember.” 

“Why? What happens in the hotel room?” Methos asked. But from the look on MacLeod’s face he could guess. Some damned stupid romantic notion from Duncan. A gesture, a promise, a ring. He felt sick. “No,” he said. This was torture. They wanted him to wait for that type of moment, when they should be looking forward to a future together, and then Methos would turn into a cold-blooded killer, and strike when his beloved’s back was turned?

“It will be fine,” MacLeod said. “I forgive you. I will always forgive you. Please, you have to do this. To save the world.”

Kronos-bunny grabbed Methos by the shoulders. “Let’s go, Brother. I’ll take you back.”

“Kronos,” Methos whispered, “if you ever told me the truth. Tell me now.”

Kronos-bunny’s eyes blazed with zeal. “Kill MacLeod.” He laughed. “And then I’ll never have to wear this—this hideous outfit.”

Methos closed his eyes, felt Kronos-bunny’s paws pat him softly on the shoulder. “I’ll be in your head, too, then,” Kronos-bunny whispered. “When you take MacLeod’s head. You and I shall also be reunited in full.”

When Methos opened his eyes, he gasped back to life. Duncan was hovering over him, telephone in hand. 

 

 

_Chapter 8_

The attack on Methos had seemed to open a floodgate. 

Duncan had called Joe immediately even as he watched Methos die, and then lie still for far longer than he should, and as he came back to life. With Joe on the line, it had been almost like a play-by-play of Immortal Challenges breaking out all over the world. Joe had finally put him on hold and forgotten him. 

After the initial breakout of fighting, it had died away. Now it seemed that all was back to relative normal. A few Immortals here and there ran across each other, every so often two of them got into a fight, eventually someone lost their head. 

It was a state of affairs that Duncan could live with. He knew it was making Methos nervous, though. The poor man was as jumpy as a cat with its tail under a rocker. He jittered about from room to room, reading books on philosophy and ethics, and that damned dog-eared copy about Schrödinger’s cat. His coffee consumption had sky-rocketed, and his eating of solid food had plummeted. 

Duncan kept a careful eye on him. Eventually, he knew, he would find out what was bothering him. 

But for now, he hoped that their vacation was enough to soothe Methos’ jangled nerves. The flight had been smooth and uneventful and all they had to do was claim their room in the luxury hotel in Miami for the week. A romantic and refreshing cruise was planned at the end of that week, and Duncan intended to enjoy every minute of it. 

Methos hefted his book bag onto his shoulders. He craned his neck to stare up at the Miami hotel façade. “Nice place,” he said and fell silent. 

“Let’s check in,” Duncan said. They entered the building. Duncan had reserved the penthouse suite. He’d stayed here before and it had been wonderful. Done in bright pastels, it was perhaps a bit heavy on the beach-theme, but it was spacious and boasted a large hot tub. Duncan desired to get Methos into that hot tub. 

“I’m sorry, sir,” the hotel attendant said. “There was some water damage to the suit from yesterday’s guests. We haven’t finished the…uh…clean up.” He flashed a fake smile. “Because the hotel is booked, we can only offer our overflow room. It’d only be for one night.”

Duncan stared the little man down. Normally he wouldn’t have minded the small inconvenience, but tonight of all nights he had wanted that hot tub. 

The attendant broke down under his glare. “Management wishes to extend its offer of half price on your entire stay for the inconvenience,” he warbled. 

Duncan considered that. He would have taken the room anyway, just for convenience of moving their things tomorrow. But this was nice. “Accepted,” he said. He turned to double check with Methos and found that he was as pale as a ghost. “Are you alright?” he asked in a low voice. 

Methos nodded slowly. 

“I know you were interested in the suite, but it’s only one night.” Duncan turned back to finished the paperwork. It did sting a bit. Methos had been excruciatingly exacting in wanting to know all the details of their hotel stays. He’s been obviously delighted at the photo spread the hotel had shown on their web page for the penthouse suite. 

They made their way to the elevator. Duncan handed Methos the extra key. “It’ll be fun,” he said. “We’ve both certainly stayed in far worse places.”

Methos smiled wanly. “And far better ones.”

The elevator stopped and they got out. Duncan led the way down the hall to the room, unlocked it, and turned on the lights. “This isn’t bad.”

He surveyed the room. A little on the dark side, because of the brown wallpaper, but the carpet was nice and the bed looked very soft, and definitely big enough for two. 

Methos followed him into the room. He looked around once and then dropped his bags on the floor. “What are we doing about dinner?” he asked. Duncan was glad to see that he seemed calmer, less jumpy, as if finally being on vacation had erased all the pre-vacation jitters. 

Duncan grinned. “Room service. I’ve got you all to myself for once, and I intend to keep it that way!”

They put away their clothes, and Duncan ordered the promised room service. The food that arrived was hot and good, and Duncan was pleased to note that Methos actually ate his food. 

“I have something for you,” Duncan said as they sipped their coffees. He brought out a small jewelry box. “Now, don’t think I’m being too over the top.”

“No,” Methos said. His eyes were riveted to the box. 

Duncan passed it over to him. “You do know what today is,” he said. 

Methos rubbed at the velvet on the top of the box. “One year ago today,” he said. “Our anniversary.”

Duncan took his free hand and smiled. “Open it.”

Methos did slowly and stared in surprise at the object inside. “It’s a tie-tack,” he said.

“It’s a promise,” Duncan said. “With Tessa, I wanted to marry her. But she was mortal. With you…it isn’t the same. Marriage is too small for what we have, too mortal. For the years we’re going to be together.” He amended that. “For what I hope we’ll be together. And if something happens because we are Immortal, then we can always part. But I don’t think it will. This is a symbol of that.”

“A promise,” Methos said. He turned the tie-tack over in his hand. “I accept your gesture.” He looked up, straight into Duncan’s eyes. “And I promise too.” 

They moved to the bed and sank into its soft covers and Duncan floated away in ecstasy. Whatever qualms Methos had had about traveling and vacations, he certainly had none where their lovemaking was concerned. 

Heat met heat, and Duncan flew to pieces and was put back again. Methos was at his fingertips and he breathed him in, and draped himself with the weight of his lover. There was an urgency to Methos’ lovemaking, an unquenchable thirst that Duncan felt reverberate off him, and he attributed it to the tie-tack. To the small symbol of their union, of their choice to be together. 

When they were spent and exhausted, Duncan pulled the covers over them, and he fell asleep. 

When he woke again, he could feel Methos lying next to him still but something wasn’t right. Sleepily he turned over and draped an arm. “You okay?” he asked, but there was no answer. 

He yawned and rubbed Methos’ arm. Something definitely wasn’t right, but he was mostly asleep and his fuzzy brain wasn’t putting all the information into a composite whole. Duncan blinked and sat up. He turned on the light nearest the bed. Everything looked fine…somewhat. As he snapped fully awake, it clicked inside his brain. He reached out and pressed his fingertips against Methos’ neck, but there was no pulse to find. He lay limply on the bed, his limbs somehow distorted, looking all wrong.

“Hell, Methos,” he said out loud, “what did you do?” 

He cast a look around and the pill bottle on the stand next to the bed practically leaped at him. He grabbed it and read the label with a sinking feeling. 

He remembered a year ago. The first night they had made love, the first night he’d known the terror of finding Methos willfully dead in the bathtub. It had made no sense. He’d killed himself, but he was Immortal and his head was still attached, so it wasn’t permanent. Why go to all the trouble? What did it gain Methos to go through this?

He remembered Methos’ first comments after he revived. He’d been more sorry about the mess than he’d been about the action. Duncan squeezed the empty bottle in his hand until the plastic cracked. This certainly was a lot less messy. But it still wasn’t permanent. 

Why then? Why? 

Had Methos always done this? So much of Methos’ past was still unrevealed to Duncan, but there had never been any clue before that he engaged in this type of behavior. Joe had never mentioned it either. As for the past year, Duncan was mostly sure that Methos had not done it even once since the bathtub incident. He’d seemed happy…. Why? It wasn’t something Duncan could answer. 

Duncan rocked back on his heels and settled in to wait for Methos to revive. They were going to have a very long discussion about this. 

 

 

 

_Chapter 9_

Methos had planned carefully. 

The prescription was legal and he’d left a strong trail recording many bleak bouts of depression and doctor’s appointments. Nothing would happen to Duncan over his demise. Methos was pretty sure Duncan would call Joe anyway, and Joe and his team would whisk Methos’ body away, but just in case something went wrong, he had made well sure that the law would leave Duncan alone. 

He was also sure Duncan could manage to drum up enough real grief to be convincing. 

He’d known it was time at the reception desk. The change of plans. The hotel. He hadn’t been surprised to see the familiar brown wall-paper. Shocked, despairing, yes. But not surprised. 

The entire evening had been hell. He knew every moment with Duncan was his last, but Duncan didn’t. The dinner…the lovemaking…the waiting in the dark for Duncan to fall asleep. It had nearly killed him with the anticipation of the last moment.

Methos had taken his sword out and laid it on the bed next to Duncan. Time had run out. He had decisions to make. All he had, however, to base those decisions on were lies, half-truths, and what he had seen and experienced. But what could he trust? 

Duncan had slept on, oblivious. He was still a good man, in the here and now. But the Gathering had started. Methos had felt that in his bones. The day that poor, tormented man had come to kill him on his doorstep, he had released the energies from the lull. And the lull itself had pent up those energies too much. Pushed everything past the tipping point. 

He was sure that no one else felt it yet, Duncan certainly didn’t recognize what was happening. But Methos felt it and knew. 

Which meant, if Kronos-bunny could be believed, that his own death was very near at hand. 

Methos went to find the tie-tack. What a ridiculous little thing. He stared at it for a long time and then tucked it away.

He put his sword away. He had made his decision, and leaving it out would only create more confusion for Duncan. 

“Okay, Kronos-bunny,” he whispered into the dark room. “If ever we were Brothers, now is the time I need you most. Help me.” He located the bottle of pills and downed them with a glass of water. He would have preferred a less painful, quicker death, but he didn’t want to leave a bloody mess for Duncan like he had done before. He owed Duncan that at least. 

He did his best to make no noise as he suffered the wracks and pangs, the sickening slide, into death. 

“Brother,” said Kronos-bunny. 

Methos crawled off the bed, relieved. Kronos-bunny had come. He had figured it out, after all. “Hello, Brother,” he said. 

“You should kill him now,” Kronos-bunny said with a stern, understated fury. “Your life or his.”

Methos shook his head. “I won’t. And you know there’s another way.”

“I don’t know why I indulge you,” Kronos-bunny said.

“You love me,” Methos said. 

“Disgusting, isn’t it?”

“Absolutely. But I won’t tell.” 

“Hurry. Macleod will know you did not do it as soon as he wakes up.”

Methos knew Kronos-bunny was referring to both future-MacLeod as well as present-Duncan. “I know. But it’s game-over. Take me there.” 

Kronos-bunny held out a pink-paw and Methos took it. 

“No more bunny suit after this?” Kronos-bunny asked. 

“No,” Methos agreed. “I think we’ve even.”

“Good.” The world melted away.

Kronos-bunny brought them directly outside the bubble. Inside, the chaos still reigned. In its own way, it was beautiful and awe inspiring. All the majesty of MacLeod’s soul was on display.

Methos reached out a hand. But he paused before he touched the bubble’s skin. “Thank you, Kronos.” He smiled. “Without your clues, I wouldn’t have figured it out.”

“We’ll rule the world together,” Kronos-bunny said. He flashed an impish grin. “In a way. I will always be available to advise you.” 

“I hope so. You’ve been good counsel.” Methos stretched out a hand to touch the bubble. As he expected, the moment he touched it, MacLeod appeared. 

“Stop! What are you doing?” MacLeod stood a few feet away, his hands out. “Don’t, please!” He looked desperate and Methos paused. 

“You didn’t tell me the rest of the story,” he said quietly, keeping an eye on MacLeod. If the man moved to stop him, then Methos would move also. “You withheld some crucial parts. I should have guessed sooner, as soon as I saw Tessa and Richie, but I saw them before Duncan and I became lovers and I didn’t connect the dots afterward. You planned that.”

MacLeod’s face was a mask of misery. “I’ll tell you anything you want, just step away.”

Methos looked at the bubble. It gleamed with that rainbow iridescence of all soap bubbles. “I know anyway what you’ll say, but you can tell me now. I’d like to hear it said.”

“It was you,” MacLeod said. He looked ragged, weary, and desperate. His shoulders slumped in defeat as he spoke. “You died. Some bastard no one had ever heard of took your head when you were down after a Quickening, and MacLeod wasn’t close enough to stop it. He never could accept that. It drove him mad. The bloodlust, the Gathering-insanity, and your death pushed him over the edge. He killed and he fought, and he won. He became The One. With all that power, he thought he could bring you back. After all, wasn’t your Quickening inside him? He had taken the bastard’s head that had taken yours.”

“But he couldn’t,” Methos said simply. 

“No. He couldn’t. And in looking for you inside his soul, he jumbled himself up beyond repair. He tried to recreate others, like Tessa and Richie and Joe, but of course it never worked, it was never truly them.”

“It drove him completely to pieces.”

“Yes. He thought if he just had more power, he could do it. So he tapped into the earth, into its core, and he tried again and again until the world fell apart.” MacLeod pointed at the bubble. “You understand why you can’t go in there, right? You’re already in there. And he’ll just assimilate you, you’ll be lost to chaos. You’ll be dead, the Gathering will come, MacLeod will become The One, and it will just happen over again.”

Methos slid a glance to Kronos-bunny. “As it has every time.”

Kronos-bunny gave him the slightest of nods. 

“Except not this time,” Methos said. “This time is different.”

“You think it’s different every time,” MacLeod said in exasperation. “And each time you fail. The only way to truly make the ending change is to kill MacLeod.”

Methos thought about that. The altered timelines had been the difficult part to parse. He was in the middle of the stream, neither the beginning nor the end. There were infinite variations to the theme, but the theme always seemed to be the same. 

“The first scenario is as you said,” Methos began slowly. He had wrapped his mind around it before, but it took effort to peel the onion-layers away and see the core of the matter. “I lose my head. MacLeod loses his mind. But then you interfered. You pulled enough of yourself together for you and Kronos to work out a plan. You came to me, me or a dozen other mes. Told me to kill MacLeod.”

“Yes,” said MacLeod. “If you kill him then you won’t be killed by the Hunter. You survive because you aren’t trying to watch MacLeod’s back.”

“But obviously that scenario never happens because I never kill MacLeod,” Methos reasoned. 

Kronos-bunny laughed. “You are very stubborn about that, Brother.” He turned to glare at MacLeod. “It’s the only outcome the both of us could ever agree upon.”

“And why you helped,” Methos said, considering. He could think of nothing else that would ever put MacLeod and Kronos on the same side, except MacLeod’s death and Methos’ survival. That Kronos would always support. “But your meddling changed the scenario. I refused to kill MacLeod, but I always come here, to the bubble.”

“Yes,” said MacLeod. “And it always ends the same. You go into the bubble and that is the end. You’re gone forever. We start again with a new you, we go back in time to find the next previous moment.” He held up his hands. “So you see why you must go back? Why you must kill MacLeod?”

“It is different this time,” Methos said. The look of surprise on Kronos-bunny’s face when he had complained that they hadn’t waited for him to take matters into his own hands was enough to tell him that he had done something out of the ordinary. He didn’t know why it was different, but this time it was. “I think you look too much to the past.” He put his other hand on the bubble. It felt just like a soap bubble, except it didn’t pop as he touched it and then pushed through. 

Behind him he heard MacLeod’s anguished cry and Kronos-bunny’s self-absorbed snort. 

But now he was fully inside the bubble. It wasn’t chaos at all. It was a sparse field with green grass, and a familiar loch down the way. Overhead the sky was a sliding scale of an infinite variety of blues. The air was cold, but the scent of fresh dirt was there also. Winter was turning over into Spring. 

“Hello,” he called as he walked toward the figure seated on a rock. 

“Methos?” Duncan turned from his contemplation of the loch. “What are you doing here?”

“Come to rescue you,” Methos answered glibly. He took a seat next to Duncan on the rock. It was just big enough for two. 

MacLeod’s heavy eyebrows scrunched in confusion. “Rescue me? But I’m on vacation. I think…I think I was sitting here waiting for you.” He tilted his head to think about his words. “Yes. Something told me you would be visiting.”

“Do you remember the Gathering?”

Duncan looked down at his hands. “I couldn’t put anything back together again, afterwards. I came here to try and forget.”

“It’s long over,” Methos told him. “You’ve got work to do now.”

“I don’t understand.” Duncan looked perplexed. “I just thought of something. I was waiting for you but I thought…I thought you were dead. If you’re here….” He lapsed into silence. 

“That’s complicated. Let me explain it later.”

“Fine.”

They both stopped talking and looked out toward the loch.

Methos leaned in close to Duncan. The air was cold, and Duncan was warm. He understood now why all the other Methoses hadn’t ever solved the problem. What was to solve? He and Duncan could exist here in this little make-believe world. Safe from harm, safe from everything. It would be as real as MacLeod could make it. 

Methos looked to the distance away from the loch. Yes, there was a solitary house there, with gentle smoke coming from its chimney. A home. Probably there was a town nearby too, filled with kind and patient people. A farmer’s market that would always have MacLeod’s favorite cheeses and Methos’ favorite wines.

Maybe it wouldn’t hurt just to stay one day. He looked back to the loch and shivered. 

“You’re cold,” Duncan observed. “Let’s go inside. There’s stew.”

“I know,” Methos said, and followed Duncan across the field to the little house. There would always be stew. Always cold beer. Always comfort and peace. This was why all the other Methoses had never completed their task. The siren song was in the air. Stay a day, stay two. Make it a week. But as time slipped past, so did any desire to return to what really was. Kronos-bunny and MacLeod had been right about the assimilation.  
Of course, now that he was here, Methos did find it hard to resist. Hadn’t he always dreamed about this? A day and a place where there was no killing? No threat? Wasn’t it a bit like the heaven everyone hoped would exist?

Methos let Duncan lead him into the house. Duncan gave him a beer and a bowl of stew. A loaf of hearty bread and softened butter was already on the table. Through the window, Methos could see the loch and the grass, and the clouds breezing through the impossibly blue sky. He didn’t take a bite. He knew that story by heart. 

“Duncan,” he said. 

“Hmm?” Duncan was happily busy in the kitchen. He was pouring cream into a small pitcher. Coffee was now brewing, its earthy scent filling the air and mingling with that of the stew. Methos could see a plate of scones on the far counter. A moment divine. 

“I’m not staying.”

“What?” Duncan didn’t even turn around. “Of course you’ll stay. You always stay. I wait for you at the rock and you arrive, and then you stay.”

“Not this time.” Methos wondered how Duncan reconciled all the time-streams, but it was a tangent and he would not be pulled into a useless discussion, no matter how fascinating. “In fact, I’m going now. You’ve had more than enough time to think about it.” Methos had no idea how he was actually going to get back outside the bubble. From inside, it looked like the world was real. There were no edges. But he’d at least tramp back to the rock and see what he could do. There were always drastic measures, too. 

“Don’t be daft,” Duncan said. “You’re staying. This is all for you.”

Methos looked grimly at Duncan. Did the man even know that he wasn’t a creation? That he was real? Possibly not. It would make a difference. From Duncan’s perspective, the real Methos was long dead, and all these visiting Methoses were just constructs that he made himself. 

“I’m leaving,” Methos announced. “I’m not one of your mind tricks. I’m real. And I’m not staying here with you.” He turned on his heel and went out the door. 

Duncan caught up to him, still with a bottle opener in his hand. “I can fix whatever it is you don’t like,” he said. “Should it be summer?” Suddenly the world grew warm, the grass lush, and little mites swarmed the air. Birds swooped by. “Winter?” he asked, growing desperate. “I’ll make whatever you want. There’s a library. And a coffee shop. In the town. I can show you.”

“No.” Methos slowed down, but he didn’t stop walking toward the rock. He glanced sideways. “What do you remember? How did it all happen as you see it?”

“You died,” Duncan said. “You always died, no matter what I did. At least, this way, I can keep you here, and you’re safe.”

Methos broke stride. “What?”

Duncan nodded. “I know you’re real. In here, you are always real. The sliver of me outside the bubble and Kronos. I let them believe what they want to believe. That piece of me, that MacLeod, he thinks if I would just die, then we could avert all of this. If I thought that too, then I’d take my own head. But I know it wouldn’t solve anything. Kronos goes along because he doesn’t want to be assimilated, and because he likes to cause you and I as much pain as possible. It keeps him from being bored, I think. But it wouldn’t happen. I lived through it all. I remember everything.”

“You planned this?”

“From the moment that I realized there was no solution. That either you or I died, that we could never ultimately be together. I wait for you, for all of those years. If I don’t do it this way, then the bastard Immortal takes your head and you’re gone forever. Lost. When I intervene, this is the best I can do, to bring you here. So I intervene. Because I won’t lose you, and in here we are safe, and together. This way, you never lost your head, you never died, you were never absorbed by some disgusting little bastard Immortal.”

Methos staggered now, feeling numb. He couldn’t absorb this. This Bubble-MacLeod had devised a plan to trick both Kronos-bunny and the outside-the-bubble-MacLeod, and thereby trick Methos…. It was too slippery and he couldn’t grasp all the permutations of it. 

“You die in that hotel room,” Bubble-MacLeod told him. A far-away look came into his face. “And I suffer then because I do not understand it. I call Joe and he helps me. I find the trail that you leave about the pills and how you make everything look to point to suicide. I am convinced that there is more than I can know, but I do not know to what purpose you have done this thing. Joe and I put you into a crypt. Just in case you ever do wake up again. And I leave you there. The rest of it plays out like you were told. The Gathering. The insanity. I wait for you here. Eventually you show up, though to you it is just a few minutes ago that you were in the hotel room, and I take you in. We have happiness forever.” Bubble-MacLeod smiled, but to Methos it was just a baring of teeth. “I’m the one who came to your rescue.”

 

 

_Chapter 10_

“Fucking hell,” Methos said under his breath. It had never once occurred to him that MacLeod was plotting and planning. The man was a mastermind, he gave him that. However, he was not especially happy that he’d been the focus of the man’s attentions. He’d sort of imagined MacLeod as the poor victim in all of the circumstances. Gone wrong, of course, but because of a mental breakdown. He’d been convinced that he could somehow persuade MacLeod to not destroy the world, to not be a big chaotic, schismed mess. And it wasn’t just the MacLeod outside the bubble, it was the one inside too. And Kronos-bunny, who had been in on it, even if he’d been fooled too. 

They’d all been scheming. 

“So, you see? It’s perfect now,” Bubble-MacLeod said. “You can stay. We’ll be happy. We can have the future that the real world never let us have.”

As he stood there on the summer-grass, Methos took a deep breath. Maybe, just maybe, it was time for murder. 

He certainly was getting sick and tired of killing himself. 

He had several goals. One was to make it back to the real world. The other was to somehow keep Duncan MacLeod from going crazy with grief and drunk on power that couldn’t give him what he wanted. But he’d have to work on that second goal later. Right now, it was time to focus on that first goal. The first step in achieving that goal was getting out of the bubble. 

The bubble was controlled by MacLeod. 

That pretty much dictated what to do. 

“I--” Methos acted unsure. He hesitated. He looked away and then at MacLeod again. “It’s not right,” he said, acting his socks off. I’m bewildered, he thought. I’m so confused. Your stupid argument is making me have doubts. “It can’t last.”

He saw the light go on in MacLeod’s eyes. He saw the feral grin come across his face and then be quickly hidden. “It will last,” MacLeod said. “As long as we want it to. We have each other. It will be more than enough.” MacLeod held out his arms and moved forward to embrace Methos. 

With a practiced move, he gathered all his strength, and broke MacLeod’s neck. 

Gotcha, Methos thought.

He let the body, head intact, tumble out of his arms and to the ground. Everything in the world seemed to pause. No more birds, no more wind, not even a few ripples on the water. Everything froze in that moment of time. 

No wine and cheese parties from the farmer’s market, Methos thought giddily. He probably just ruined everything. There was a chance he had. The world, just at the edges, started melting. 

Methos watched it melt. MacLeod was at the epicenter and soon enough the melting would reach them. Methos could only hope that when it all melted down, that he would not be included in that. 

The dark black-blue of the water melted into the bright blue of the sky, and the green grass and wild yellows all came together. Methos bent down and took MacLeod’s hand. Perhaps if he could just hang on. He closed his eyes. 

Nothing happened. 

“You were right, Brother. You finally were different.”

Methos opened his eyes and Kronos was standing before him. All around them was stark white nothingness. Kronos no longer had on the pink bunny costume. Instead he was dressed in black leather, with his face painted the familiar way of old. 

“Kronos?” he asked. 

“None other. You don’t disappoint, Methos. You said you were different, and you were. No one else ever managed this much destruction until you came along.” Kronos made a show of clapping his hands. “Bravo. Bravo.”

Methos looked down. The body of Bubble-MacLeod was still there. They hadn’t melted away. He looked back to Kronos. “I see you lost the rabbit suit.”

Kronos smirked. “You did promise.”

Methos frowned. “I never had anything to do with you and that--” He stopped. “You mean that when I--” He pointed to where the bubble had been in existence. “From inside the bubble?”

“Of course. All the past Methoses that came along. Once they were inside the bubble, living the high life with their darling Duncan, they thought it was amusing to keep me in that wretched outfit. You did promise, though, before you went in to put an end to it.” Kronos grinned. “They all promised. But only you delivered, Brother.”

Methos shook his head. “But the first time it happened?”

“You can imagine my outrage.”

“Right.” Methos sighed. It was like talking to the Sphinx. Still, it was unsettling in a way to see him out of the bunny suit. That pink suit had somehow diluted him, made him less formidable. Methos didn’t wonder that one of his earlier selves had a wicked sense of humor and had done it in the first place. It seemed that by just not extending the punishment, it had stopped. “Now what?” Methos asked. 

“You tell me,” Kronos said. He walked around the dead form of MacLeod on the ground, boots clunking, chains rattling lightly. “We never made it this far before. You’re treading new ground.”

Methos turned in a circle, looking in all directions. “Where’s the other MacLeod? The outside the bubble version?”

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Kronos said. “You should be pleased that I stayed to see how your misadventure turned out.”

Methos crouched down and checked on Bubble-MacLeod. He was still dead. Was it possible that the other MacLeod hadn’t shown up because he was dead too? That these two MacLeods were still intimately linked? 

The MacLeod on the ground groaned and heaved in air, and sat straight up. He stared dizzily at Methos. “What happened?”

Methos helped him get to his feet. “You tried to trap me in your bubble world so I broke your neck.”

MacLeod was still woozy on his feet. “You did?”

“He did,” said the other MacLeod, who had now appeared. Methos bit back a grin of anticipation. Perhaps there was an answer to this riddle after all. The other MacLeod was agitated. “You have a lot to answer for!” he spat at the bubble-MacLeod. 

“Like hell I do!”

The two of them faced off, twins staring at each other with venom. 

“MacLeods!” Methos yelled and that got their attention. They turned to him and it was like seeing double. “I think you two need to shake hands. Greet each other first, at least, before you tear each other apart. It’s been a while since you’ve been together, yes?”

They didn’t look like they were willing at all to shake hands. Maybe bite each other, and tear into some flesh, but certainly not do anything as gentlemanly as shake hands. 

They turned to glare at each other again and Methos took the matter into his own hands. He leaned forward, putting his weight on the bubble-MacLeod’s back and pushed. MacLeod stumbled forward, squarely into the other MacLeod. 

“Clumsy oaf. You’ve neglected your katas,” said the other MacLeod. “Get off me!” He tried to push the bubble-MacLeod away and then panicked. “He’s stuck!” He turned to Methos. “Quick, pull me away!”

Bubble-MacLeod mumbled for help, but he was face down into the other’s MacLeod’s chest and the words were indistinct. 

“I don’t think so,” Methos said and crossed his arms over his chest to wait. “The two of you need to make up. No more fighting. No more chaos. No more schism.”

The reuniting didn’t take long after that. The two of them melted together, much like the way Methos had been traveling between the worlds, until finally only one man stood there, a combination of the two, and Methos hoped—finally whole. 

“Duncan?” he asked. 

Duncan MacLeod spent a moment to shift his weight, to turn his head, and then to smile. He held his arms wide open. “Yes,” he said, and he finally sounded like himself. He looked fit and rested, and generally glowing with good health. 

Methos gave him a quick, hard hug and a vigorous pounding on the back, as if Duncan had just scored a winning goal. Duncan hugged him back, and it felt entirely right, entirely like Duncan. “It’s you? Really you?” he asked again. He wanted to believe, but he’d been tricked before. 

“I think so. I feel whole. I feel amazing, in fact.” Duncan looked around him at the vast whiteness. “I remember what happened, but it is disjointed in parts. Two memories for the same event, it’s hard to reconcile the two perspectives.” He frowned at the empty landscape. “This place could look better.” He closed his eyes and concentrated for a moment. 

Grass sprouted, a blue sky developed, and flowers sprung up. In the distance, there were mountains. A bench appeared. 

“That’s enough for right this minute,” Duncan decided. He motioned to the bench. “Let’s sit down and talk about this.”

“Talking,” Methos muttered. “There’s a novel idea.”

Duncan just smiled indulgently at him, as if he couldn’t be happier to have Methos making snide remarks. 

“What now?” Methos asked. “What about me?”

Duncan brushed his fingers across Methos’ forearm. “Whatever you like. You can stay or go.” He leaned forward, pressing his hands together. “I have a bit of work to do to fix everything I….”

“Destroyed?” Methos prompted.

“Yes, destroyed. It’ll take a bit on concentration. I can’t undo all that damage in the blink of an eye.”

“Fair enough,” Methos said. “But you will?”

“I will.” Duncan looked sad for a moment. “I missed you. The real you. The ones I made were pale comparisons.”

“Of course they were. I could have told you that. You probably tried to make them nicer than I am.” Methos stretched out his legs. It felt good to relax, to revel in the giddy knowledge that his adventure was nearly at an end. 

“Maybe,” Duncan conceded. “When I remake the world, your body will be there, you know.”

Methos raised an eyebrow. “In the crypt?”

Duncan nodded. 

“But if you’re The One and I go back, won’t we be compelled to kill each other?” Methos asked. This had been on his mind, something he’d never really given voice to, but it seemed very pertinent to the moment’s decisions. 

“I don’t know,” Duncan admitted. “It’s possible, I guess.”

“I don’t belong to that time anyway,” Methos said. 

“You can stay here,” Duncan offered. “It’ll be safe. And we can be together.”

Methos shook his head. “No. As much as you are my Duncan, you aren’t my Duncan. And I’d go crazy myself in short order if I hung about inside your skull, MacLeod.” He thumbed at Kronos. “And he’d be the one driving me over the edge next. No, I want to go back.”

“No,” Duncan said, a hint of stubborn fear in his voice, “you’ll die again. The Gathering has started already. You’ve done so much to save me, I won’t let you go again.” He looked beyond distressed about even the thought of returning Methos to the proper time and place. 

“I’ll be okay,” Methos said. “You told me enough already for me to keep a good look out. I don’t think anyone is going to be getting the drop on me so easily.”

“It’ll change,” Duncan warned. “You’ve already changed history. You won’t know enough.”

Methos laughed. “And you won’t send Kronos with a drop-by reminder?”

Duncan looked stunned and then laughed himself. “I suppose I might.”

Methos sobered and leaned in to look Duncan straight in the eyes. “I don’t think you and I would fight, Duncan. If I wouldn’t kill you to save the whole world and if you tried so damned hard to save me, even if it meant your own death, it seems like a rather impressive impasse.”

“Rock and a hard place,” Duncan commented, riveted. 

“Something like that.” Methos leaned back. He rubbed at his eyes. He was tired. He’d been up for hours and hours now. “One more thing besides.”

“What’s that, oh great one?” Duncan asked. His voice was light. 

“The Gathering.”

Duncan scowled. 

“If you win every damned time, and you’re going to sit here in the future with nothing else to do but put the world back together, maybe you want to save yourself some work and not destroy it in the first place.”

“That sounds reasonable,” Duncan said tightly. “But if I could have done that, I would have before.”

Methos took a hard look at Duncan. “No. Before was before, and now is now. You can do it now. You aren’t in tatters any longer. You’ve come out the other side.”

“I’ll think of something,” Duncan said. He leaned in close and spoke softly into Methos’ ear. “And if I don’t, I’m sending Kronos to come get you. Hell or high water.”

Methos yawned. “Sure. Come get me,” he acquiesced. He’d fight with Kronos if he ever showed up. No one was taking him anywhere he didn’t want to go. Unless he felt like going. 

“Come here. You’re exhausted.” Duncan put his arm around Methos and pulled him close. 

Methos closed his eyes. “I’m just going to rest for a second.”

Duncan ran his fingers through Methos’ hair, tracing a whorl. “You’ve had quite a day,” he said softly. “Travel, dinner, and heavy philosophy. Dying and coming here. Fighting and fighting.”

“Mmrmph,” Methos agreed, and then he wasn’t paying attention anymore. He was too comfortable, too tired, and Duncan felt so nice to lean up against, that he fell asleep. 

 

 

 

_Chapter 11_

The bed was very hard. 

Methos gasped awake and groaned. The hotel room should give them the whole night free with beds this hard in their overflow space. 

He tried to sit up and bashed his forehead. “Fuck!” he swore and put a hand to his head. After the stars cleared, he blinked and looked around. “Damn it,” he said. “I’m in that god forsaken crypt.” He sighed. No wonder the bed was hard. This bed was made of granite.

It meant he’d been dead for not a little while. Poor Duncan. The man didn’t deserve to go through all this. Again. Methos frowned. Or not again. 

He shook his head. Time travel was a stupid idea anyway. 

He ran his fingers around the edge of the crypt until he found the handholds and pushed the stone out of the way. At least he’d had air. That could have been awkward. MacLeod and Joe put him in the crypt and he spent a couple decades before being able to make his escape for lack of oxygen. It’d never make a good party story. Not even among other Immortals. 

The stone moved. He pushed and pulled until he was out of the resting area. He looked back down. “Smart boy,” he said. Duncan had left him a few presents. A cell phone, money, a small jewelers bag with gemstones, a map, a working timepiece, and a note. Someone was thinking both long term and short term.

The cell phone was dead, so Methos chucked it back in. Probably would have been nice if he’d revived a little earlier, but by the little clock’s numbers, Methos had spent the better portion of two months locked away. It was also very early morning. “Probably that damned bubble,” he said to himself in a low tone as he pocketed the money. “It used up time like nobody’s business.” 

He closed the lid behind him. Nobody needed to know that the cemetery was one body short. Then he strolled out. It was a warm day, and they’d buried him in dark clothes with long-sleeves. Methos rolled up his sleeves and checked the map. He was gratified to see they’d taken the trouble to bring him back to Seacouver. Probably MacLeod wanting time for visits. He always did mope around too much. MacLeod’s morose moping habits, Methos considered, were definitely the cause of all the trouble. 

He waved to the arriving groundskeeper who watched him with an open-mouthed stare. Methos grinned. Someone was going to have a funny story to tell later on. Did you hear the one about the locked up mausoleum where the corpse walked out?

Methos laughed and hiked to the nearest busy street to catch a cab. 

Duncan hadn’t moved. He still had the little house on the bad side of town. It looked as if Duncan had thrown his entire being into renovating, though. The house was newly painted, it sported a new fence, also newly painted, and the yard was landscaped to within an inch of its life. The houses on either side of Duncan’s seemed to be enjoying the over abundance of attention. One had a spruced up door, the other had window boxes with herbs growing.

Methos fished the key out from his pocket. One more important thing that Duncan had interred him with. A key, and a promise, that if he should awake, he was welcome home again. Methos touched the tie-tack against his chest. They’d even buried him with a tie. Joe must have been laughing his ass off at that one. 

Methos paused at the door and took the folded note out of his pocket. It was just a single piece of paper of high quality, the better to survive time’s march in the damp crypt, and MacLeod had wrapped it inside a plastic sleeve for even more protection. It didn’t have much written on it, but all of it was in MacLeod’s handwriting. The date of the day he died and the date he was interred, as well as phone numbers to contact either MacLeod or Joe. Very practical, Methos thought. It also contained a short line: the door is always open to you. Yet another sign that MacLeod’s promise was good. 

Methos was quiet as he entered the house. Duncan’s car was out front and he expected him home, probably sleeping at this early hour.

He felt the low thrum of Duncan’s presence and he smiled and waited. Surely an Immortal signature this early in the morning should get the man out of bed? Methos frowned. 

Duncan was certainly not confronting him, sword in hand. 

Methos could feel Immortal Presence. He took out his own sword, grateful again to Duncan and Joe for burying him with it. 

He crept up to the bedroom. The door was ajar and Methos peeked inside. Duncan was in bed, asleep amid the jumble of sheets. He looked like he had been tossing and turning earlier, not sleeping quietly, but for the moment he like he had found a moment of deep sleep. 

Sure that it was truly Duncan in the house, he tucked away his sword. Then Methos backed away and retreated to the kitchen. 

He took the tie tack out of his tie and pricked the end of his finger. A drop of blood welled up and a small spark of electricity sealed the wound. So he was still Immortal. He could still sense other Immortals, but he seemed to have lost his own Immortal signature. Which meant no one was going to be after his head if they didn’t already know he was Immortal. 

Future Duncan must have had something to do with that. He had certainly looked a bit smug at the time when Methos had suggested that he figure out something to do about the Gathering. It wasn’t really a solution, but it would definitely be an advantage. Methos thought about his Duncan, sleeping in the bed, and about the possible downsides of this new ability. He would need to be very careful indeed about this new advantage. 

This type of development caused its own problems, but he could deal with it. Methos looked down at the drop of blood still on his fingertip. If it became a problem, he’d go and have a chat with future Duncan about it. If he could still do such a thing. He wasn’t going to try and find out, that was for certain. 

Methos studied the kitchen. Duncan had been busy on the inside of his house with renovations. It was fully remodeled with new gleaming maple cabinets, a tile floor, granite countertops, and all matching appliance. One wall had been half-removed to make more space. It was bright and cheery, very welcoming. In the early morning, it was also very quiet and lonely.

Duncan still kept his coffee maker and the coffee in the same place, though. Methos started a pot. 

As it brewed, he sat at the counter and just let the moments pass by. 

When the coffee was done, he poured himself a cup and slowly sipped at it. He was more hungry than he realized. His body hadn’t eaten for two months, even if it seemed like much less time to his mind. After he woke Duncan up, perhaps they could go out for a big breakfast. Just the idea of a large stack of pancakes with maple syrup made him dizzy with desire. 

The coffee was good. He kept his hands wrapped around the mug to warm them and he inhaled the scent. 

He tried to imagine what to do next. On the way over he’d thought that Duncan would recognize his Presence and come out to greet him. That he hadn’t gave Methos the unshakable feeling that he was a ghost. That he was only here in spirit, and not in the flesh. 

He heard Duncan’s alarm go off in the bedroom and the resulting smack. He tensed, waiting, but it seemed Duncan had hit the snooze. That didn’t bode well. Duncan was generally an early riser, a morning person. He greeted each day with enthusiasm. He enjoyed starting a new day, with all those possibilities open to him

Maybe he had just stayed up too late last night, Methos thought. 

Methos finished the coffee and rinsed the cup in the sink, but the ordinary kitchen sounds didn’t rouse Duncan. 

Methos went to the bedroom doorway and stared in. Here was his Duncan, without the battle scars and the weight of being the winner of the game. His simple, pure, wonderful Highlander. He longed to crawl right into bed with Duncan, but thought perhaps the closeness of a sudden discovery might not be the healthiest choice. It was time to announce himself, though. He didn’t want to be a ghost in Duncan’s house anymore.

“Duncan,” he called out. “Duncan?”

 

 

 

_Chapter 12_

Usually Duncan didn’t hit the snooze button, but he’d been having the most wonderful, and awful, dream. He’d dreamed Methos was in the kitchen, making breakfast. He could almost smell the coffee. Methos was reading the newspaper with a mug of coffee in his hand, each page turned with the familiar crinkle. A snort here and there at a particular article. A sip of coffee. 

At the beginning of the dream, Duncan hadn’t remembered that Methos was gone. It had just been an ordinary morning, but then the alarm had gone off, and once even slightly awake, he had known it was a dream. But it had been so easy to hold onto that sleepy-headed mental picture, and as he closed his eyes, he was dreaming again that Methos was in the kitchen. Of course, then, he remembered that it couldn’t be true. 

He had lingered in that drowsy-trance for several long minutes, grateful for even the simple dream-chicanery. It felt real, even if it was a very simple dream. What his memory told him was true he could hold at bay while he kept his eyes closed and his head on a pillow, and it felt like Methos was out there. So close, so far. 

“Duncan. Duncan?” 

Duncan closed his eyes tighter for a split second. He’d heard Methos…more real than a dream…. His brain processed what his heart already knew and he shot out of bed. 

Methos was in the doorway, looking solid and heartbreakingly real, with a wary and fierce look. 

“Methos?” 

“Duncan,” Methos said. “Missed you.”

Duncan took two steps and embraced him. “You’re alive!” 

Methos hugged him back. “And better than ever.”

After a few minutes of touching, kissing, clasping, struggling through the harsh relief that Methos was solid and alive, and the instantaneous grief and anger that came flooding back as if the loss were real all over again, Duncan pulled back and sniffed the air. “You made coffee?” he asked, his voice choked up, caught between laughing and crying. It hadn’t been a dream, Methos had been in the kitchen after all.

Methos laughed with him, and it almost turned to tears, but he wiped a hand across his eyes, and regained control. “I needed some caffeine to help me wake up. It’s early, you know.”

“Oh, god, Methos.” Duncan hugged him again. “It’s been two months!” Duncan pulled away and walked around the bedroom, never taking his eyes off Methos. “You were dead! You killed yourself. On our vacation!” he accused. 

“That’s a bit complicated,” Methos started to explain. 

“On our vacation!” Duncan said again harshly, then blinked, and drew a shaky breath. He shook his head. 

“Easier to be angry about that, isn’t it?” Methos asked. “Take me to bed, Duncan. There’ll be time enough later for you to scold and for me to explain.” He grinned. “Then, take me to breakfast. I’m starving.”

“I’ll bet you are,” Duncan said, his voice low and rough. He gave Methos a solid look-over, though, and he didn’t like what he saw. He looked like he had just crawled out of his own tomb. “I think we’ll reverse that order. Breakfast first, then a hot shower for you, and some sleep.” He placed his hand on the back of Methos’ neck and brought their foreheads together to touch. “I’ll ravish you later, don’t worry about that.”

“Duncan,” Methos said on a sigh. His stomach growled. 

Duncan laughed. “Give me a moment to get dressed. You look like you came from your own funeral,” he joked. “Do you want some different clothes? I kept yours….” His face tightened. 

Methos wandered over to the dresser. 

“I waited two weeks,” Duncan said. “I would have waited longer, but Joe thought you’d be safer if you weren’t laid out on my couch.” He tried to smile, but it came out lopsided. 

“I couldn’t have asked for more,” Methos said. “I was safe where you put me. And you left me cold hard cash and a bag of jewels.” He pulled on jeans and a favorite long sleeved t-shirt. “Though it does feel very, very good to be home.”

Duncan finished dressing and came over and put his arms around Methos, leaning in to kiss him on the shoulder, on the neck, on the lips. “You are going to tell me what is going on?” he asked. His eyebrows drew down with concern. Now that the shock of seeing Methos alive was fading and he could think again, he realized he’d missed something earlier. “And why I didn’t feel you come into the house?” 

“Most of it,” Methos said. “Like I said, it’s complicated. As for the other….” He shrugged. “I have a good guess what might have happened. But I don’t think it’s a bad thing, considering.”

Duncan let it slide for the moment. It was certainly a big enough topic to tackle on its own, and he would not let Methos weasel out of giving a full explanation. In fact, he was absolutely planning on making sure that he and Methos had some very long, very frank discussions.

Duncan gave Methos the most serious look he had. “If you die again, are you going to stay dead for two months every time?”

“I don’t think so. That should be over,” Methos said. 

Duncan released a deep breath. “Good. Because I don’t think I could survive it if you did. Somehow, I just knew you’d be back, but…two months.”

“I know,” Methos said. “And I don’t plan to be going anywhere anytime soon. You can believe that.”

“Then why did you before?”

Methos tilted his head and studying Duncan. His mouth twitched into a smile. “That is a very interesting, and complicated, story that you are not going to hear about until I’ve got buttermilk pancakes on my plate and as much maple syrup as I desire. But I promise, I’m going to at least try and explain it.”

“You’d better.” Duncan could be patient. Whatever was going on, Methos seemed willing to talk about it. As soon as his stomach was satisfied. He grabbed his car keys. “Then let’s go find some pancakes.”

~end~

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for bad language, pretty uncomfortable levels of personal violence, and ethical dilemmas.


End file.
